London Labour And The London Poor (Vol. 3 of 4)

I.—STREET EXHIBITORS. — Punch. — Punch Talk. — Scene with two Punchmen. — The Punchman at the Theatre. — Mr. Punch’s Refreshment. — The History of Punch. — Mr. Punch’s Figures. — Description of Frame and Proscenium. — The Fantoccini Man. — Guy Fawkeses. — Guy Fawkes (Man). — Guy Fawkes (Boy). — An Old Street Showman. — The Chinese Shades. — Exhibitor of Mechanical Figures. — The Telescope Exhibitor. — Exhibitor of the Microscope. — Peep-Shows. — Acrobat, or Street-Posturer. — The Street Risley. — The Strong Man. — The Street Juggler. — The Street Conjurer. — Statement of another Street Conjurer. — The Street Fire-King, or Salamander. — The Snake, Sword, and Knife-Swallower. — Street Clown. — The Penny-Gaff Clown. — The Canvas Clown. — The Penny-Circus Jester. — Silly Billy. — Billy Barlow. — Strolling Actors. — Ballet Performers. — The Tight-Rope Dancers and Stilt-Vaulters. — Street Reciter. — Blind Reader. — Gun-Exercise Exhibitor—One-legged Italian.

The performer of Punch that I saw was a short, dark, pleasant-looking man, dressed in a very greasy and very shiny green shooting-jacket. This was fastened together by one button in front, all the other button-holes having been burst through. Protruding from his bosom, a corner of the pandean pipes was just visible, and as he told me the story of his adventures, he kept playing with the band of his very limp and very rusty old beaver hat. He had formerly been a gentleman’s servant, and was especially civil in his manners. He came to me with his hair tidily brushed for the occasion, but apologised for his appearance on entering the room. He was very communicative, and took great delight in talking like Punch, with his call in his mouth, while some young children were in the room, and who, hearing the well-known sound of Punch’s voice, looked all about for the figure. Not seeing the show, they fancied the man had the figure in his pocket, and that the sounds came from it. The change from Punch’s voice to the man’s natural tone was managed without an effort, and instantaneously. It had a very peculiar effect.

“I am the proprietor of a Punch’s show,” he said. “I goes about with it myself, and performs inside the frame behind the green baize. I have a pardner what plays the music—the pipes and drum; him as you see’d with me. I have been five-and-twenty year now at the business. I wish I’d never seen it, though it’s been a money-making business—indeed, the best of all the street hexhibitions I may say. I am fifty years old. I took to it for money gains—that was what I done it for. I formerly lived in service—was a footman in a gentleman’s family. When I first took to it, I could make two and three pounds a-day—I could so. You see, the way in which I took first to the business was this here—there was a party used to come and ‘cheer’ for us at my master’s house, and her son having a hexhibition of his own, and being in want of a pardner, axed me if so be I’d go out, which was a thing that I degraded at the time. He gave me information as to what the money-taking was, and it seemed to me that good, that it would pay me better nor service. I had twenty pounds a-year in my place, and my board and lodging, and two suits of clothes, but the young man told me as how I could make one pound a-day at the Punch-and-Judy business, after a little practice. I took a deal of persuasion, though, before I’d join him—it was beneath my dignity to fall from a footman to a showman. But, you see, the French gennelman as I lived with (he were a merchant in the city, and had fourteen clerks working for him) went back to his own country to reside, and left me with a written kerrackter; but that was no use to me: though I’d fine recommendations at the back of it, no one would look at it; so I was five months out of employment, knocking about—living first on my wages and then on my clothes, till all was gone but the few rags on my back. So I began to think that the Punch-and-Judy business was better than starving after all. Yes, I should think anything was better than that, though it’s a business that, after you’ve once took to, you never can get out of—people fancies you know too much, and won’t have nothing to say to you. If I got a situation at a tradesman’s, why the boys would be sure to recognise me behind the counter, and begin a shouting into the shop (they must shout, you know): ‘Oh, there’s Punch and Judy—there’s Punch a-sarving out the customers!’ Ah, it’s a great annoyance being a public kerrackter, I can assure you, sir; go where you will, it’s ‘Punchy, Punchy!’ As for the boys, they’ll never leave me alone till I die, I know; and I suppose in my old age I shall have to take to the parish broom. All our forefathers died in the workhouse. I don’t know a Punch’s showman that hasn’t. One of my pardners was buried by the workhouse; and even old Pike, the most noted showman as ever was, died in the workhouse—Pike and Porsini. Porsini was the first original street Punch, and Pike was his apprentice; their names is handed down to posterity among the noblemen and footmen of the land. They both died in the workhouse, and, in course, I shall do the same. Something else might turn up, to be sure. We can’t say what this luck of the world is. I’m obliged to strive very hard—very hard indeed, sir, now, to get a living; and then not to get it after all—at times, compelled to go short, often.

“Punch, you know, sir, is a dramatic performance in two hacts. It’s a play, you may say. I don’t think it can be called a tragedy hexactly; a drama is what we names it. There is tragic parts, and comic and sentimental parts, too. Some families where I performs will have it most sentimental—in the original style; them families is generally sentimental theirselves. Others is all for the comic, and then I has to kick up all the games I can. To the sentimental folk I am obliged to perform werry steady and werry slow, and leave out all comic words and business. They won’t have no ghost, no coffin, and no devil; and that’s what I call spiling the performance entirely. It’s the march of hintellect wot’s a doing all this—it is, sir. But I was a going to tell you about my first jining the business. Well, you see, after a good deal of persuading, and being drew to it, I may say, I consented to go out with the young man as I were a-speaking about. He was to give me twelve shillings a-week and my keep, for two years certain, till I could get my own show things together, and for that I was to carry the show, and go round and collect. Collecting, you know, sounds better than begging; the pronounciation’s better like. Sometimes the people says, when they sees us a coming round, ‘Oh, here they comes a-begging’—but it can’t be begging, you know, when you’re a hexerting yourselves. I couldn’t play the drum and pipes, so the young man used to do that himself, to call the people together before he got into the show. I used to stand outside, and patter to the figures. The first time that ever I went out with Punch was in the beginning of August, 1825. I did all I could to avoid being seen. My dignity was hurt at being hobligated to take to the streets for a living. At fust I fought shy, and used to feel queer somehow, you don’t know how like, whenever the people used to look at me. I remember werry well the first street as ever I performed in. It was off Gray’s Inn, one of them quiet, genteel streets, and when the mob began to gather round I felt all-overish, and I turned my head to the frame instead of the people. We hadn’t had no rehearsals aforehand, and I did the patter quite permiscuous. There was not much talk, to be sure, required then; and what little there was, consisted merely in calling out the names of the figures as they came up, and these my master prompted me with from inside the frame. But little as there was for me to do, I know I never could have done it, if it hadn’t been for the spirits—the false spirits, you see (a little drop of gin), as my master guv me in the morning. The first time as ever I made my appearance in public, I collected as much as eight shillings, and my master said, after the performance was over, ‘You’ll do!’ You see I was partly in livery, and looked a little bit decent like. After this was over, I kept on going out with my master for two years, as I had agreed, and at the end of that time I had saved enough to start a show of my own. I bought the show of old Porsini, the man as first brought Punch into the streets of England. To be sure, there was a woman over here with it before then. Her name was——I can’t think of it just now, but she never performed in the streets, so we consider Porsini as our real forefather. It isn’t much more nor seventy years since Porsini (he was a werry old man when he died, and blind) showed the hexhibition in the streets of London. I’ve heerd tell that old Porsini used to take very often as much as ten pounds a-day, and he used to sit down to his fowls and wine, and the very best of everything, like the first gennelman in the land; indeed, he made enough money at the business to be quite a tip-top gennelman, that he did. But he never took care of a halfpenny he got. He was that independent, that if he was wanted to perform, sir, he’d come at his time, not your’n. At last, he reduced himself to want, and died in St. Giles’s workhouse. Ah, poor fellow! he oughtn’t to have been allowed to die where he did, after amusing the public for so many years. Every one in London knowed him. Lords, dukes, princes, squires, and wagabonds—all used to stop to laugh at his performance, and a funny clever old fellow he was. He was past performing when I bought my show of him, and werry poor. He was living in the Coal-yard, Drury-lane, and had scarcely a bit of food to eat. He had spent all he had got in drink, and in treating friends,—aye, any one, no matter who. He didn’t study the world, nor himself neither. As fast as the money came it went, and when it was gone, why, he’d go to work and get more. His show was a very inferior one, though it were the fust—nothing at all like them about now—nothing near as good. If you only had four sticks then, it was quite enough to make plenty of money out of, so long as it was Punch. I gave him thirty-five shillings for the stand, figures and all. I bought it cheap, you see, for it was thrown on one side, and was of no use to any one but such as myself. There was twelve figures and the other happaratus, such as the gallows, ladder, horse, bell, and stuffed dog. The characters was Punch, Judy, Child, Beadle, Scaramouch, Nobody, Jack Ketch, the Grand Senoor, the Doctor, the Devil (there was no Ghost used then), Merry Andrew, and the Blind Man. These last two kerrackters are quite done with now. The heads of the kerrackters was all carved in wood, and dressed in the proper costume of the country. There was at that time, and is now, a real carver for the Punch business. He was dear, but werry good and hexcellent. His Punch’s head was the best as I ever seed. The nose and chin used to meet quite close together. A set of new figures, dressed and all, would come to about fifteen pounds. Each head costs five shillings for the bare carving alone, and every figure that we has takes at least a yard of cloth to dress him, besides ornaments and things that comes werry expensive. A good show at the present time will cost three pounds odd for the stand alone—that’s including baize, the frontispiece, the back scene, the cottage, and the letter cloth, or what is called the drop-scene at the theatres. In the old ancient style, the back scene used to pull up and change into a gaol scene, but that’s all altered now.

PUNCH’S SHOWMEN.

[From a Photograph.]

“We’ve got more upon the comic business now, and tries to do more with Toby than with the prison scene. The prison is what we calls the sentimental style. Formerly Toby was only a stuffed figure. It was Pike who first hit upon hintroducing a live dog, and a great hit it were—it made a grand alteration in the hexhibition, for now the performance is called Punch and Toby as well. There is one Punch about the streets at present that tries it on with three dogs, but that ain’t much of a go—too much of a good thing I calls it. Punch, as I said before, is a drama in two hacts. We don’t drop the scene at the end of the first—the drum and pipes strikes up instead. The first act we consider to end with Punch being taken to prison for the murder of his wife and child. The great difficulty in performing Punch consists in the speaking, which is done by a call, or whistle in the mouth, such as this here.” (He then produced the call from his waistcoat pocket. It was a small flat instrument, made of two curved pieces of metal about the size of a knee-buckle, bound together with black thread. Between these was a plate of some substance (apparently silk), which he said was a secret. The call, he told me, was tuned to a musical instrument, and took a considerable time to learn. He afterwards took from his pocket two of the small metallic plates unbound. He said the composition they were made of was also one of the “secrets of the purfession.” They were not tin, nor zinc, because “both of them metals were poisons in the mouth, and hinjurious to the constitution.”) “These calls,” he continued, “we often sell to gennelmen for a sovereign a-piece, and for that we give ’em a receipt how to use them. They ain’t whistles, but calls, or unknown tongues, as we sometimes names ’em, because with them in the mouth we can pronounce each word as plain as any parson. We have two or three kinds—one for out-of-doors, one for in-doors, one for speaking and for singing, and another for selling. I’ve sold many a one to gennelmen going along, so I generally keeps a hextra one with me. Porsini brought the calls into this country with him from Italy, and we who are now in the purfession have all learnt how to make and use them, either from him or those as he had taught ’em to. I larnt the use of mine from Porsini himself. My master whom I went out with at first would never teach me, and was werry partickler in keeping it all secret from me. Porsini taught me the call at the time I bought his show of him. I was six months in perfecting myself in the use of it. I kept practising away night and morning with it, until I got it quite perfect. It was no use trying at home, ’cause it sounds quite different in the hopen hair. Often when I’ve made ’em at home, I’m obliged to take the calls to pieces after trying ’em out in the streets, they’ve been made upon too weak a scale. When I was practising, I used to go into the parks, and fields, and out-of-the-way places, so as to get to know how to use it in the hopen hair. Now I’m reckoned one of the best speakers in the whole purfession. When I made my first appearance as a regular performer of Punch on my own account, I did feel uncommon narvous, to be sure: though I know’d the people couldn’t see me behind the baize, still I felt as if all the eyes of the country were upon me. It was as much as hever I could do to get the words out, and keep the figures from shaking. When I struck up the first song, my voice trembled so as I thought I never should be able to get to the hend of the first hact. I soon, however, got over that there, and at present I’d play before the whole bench of bishops as cool as a cowcumber. We always have a pardner now to play the drum and pipes, and collect the money. This, however, is only a recent dodge. In older times we used to go about with a trumpet—that was Porsini’s ancient style; but now that’s stopped. Only her majesty’s mails may blow trumpets in the streets at present. The fust person who went out with me was my wife. She used to stand outside, and keep the boys from peeping through the baize, whilst I was performing behind it; and she used to collect the money afterwards as well. I carried the show and trumpet, and she the box. She’s been dead these five years now. Take one week with another, all through the year, I should say I made then five pounds regular. I have taken as much as two pounds ten shillings in one day in the streets; and I used to think it a bad day’s business at that time if I took only one pound. You can see Punch has been good work—a money-making business—and beat all mechanics right out. If I could take as much as I did when I first began, what must my forefathers have done, when the business was five times as good as ever it were in my time? Why, I leaves you to judge what old Porsini and Pike must have made. Twenty years ago I have often and often got seven shillings and eight shillings for one hexhibition in the streets: two shillings and three shillings I used to think low to get at one collection; and many times I’d perform eight or ten times in a day. We didn’t care much about work then, for we could get money fast enough; but now I often show twenty times in the day, and get scarcely a bare living at it arter all. That shows the times, you know, sir—what things was and is now. Arter performing in the streets of a day we used to attend private parties in the hevening, and get sometimes as much as two pounds for the hexhibition. This used to be at the juvenile parties of the nobility; and the performance lasted about an hour and a half. For a short performance of half-an-hour at a gennelman’s house we never had less than one pound. A performance outside the house was two shillings and sixpence; but we often got as much as ten shillings for it. I have performed afore almost all the nobility. Lord —— was particular partial to us, and one of our greatest patronizers. At the time of the Police Bill I met him at Cheltenham on my travels, and he told me as he had saved Punch’s neck once more; and it’s through him principally that we are allowed to exhibit in the streets. Punch is exempt from the Police Act. If you read the hact throughout, you won’t find Punch mentioned in it. But all I’ve been telling you is about the business as it was. What it is, is a werry different consarn. A good day for us now seldom gets beyond five shillings, and that’s between myself and my pardner, who plays the drum and pipes. Often we are out all day, and get a mere nuffing. Many days we have been out and taken nuffing at all—that’s werry common when we dwells upon horders. By dwelling on horders, I means looking out for gennelmen what want us to play in front of their houses. When we strike up in the hopen street we take upon a haverage only threepence a show. In course we may do more, but that’s about the sum, take one street performance with another. Them kind of performances is what we calls ‘short showing.’ We gets the halfpence and hooks it. A ‘long pitch’ is the name we gives to performances that lasts about half-an-hour or more. Them long pitches we confine solely to street corners in public thoroughfares; and then we take about a shilling upon a haverage, and more if it’s to be got—we never turns away nuffing. ‘Boys, look up your fardens,’ says the outside man; ‘it ain’t half over yet, we’ll show it all through.’ The short shows we do only in private by-streets, and of them we can get through about twenty in the day; that’s as much as we can tackle—ten in the morning, and ten in the afternoon. Of the long pitches we can only do eight in the day. We start on our rounds at nine in the morning, and remain out till dark at night. We gets a snack at the publics on our road. The best hours for Punch are in the morning from nine till ten, because then the children are at home. Arter that, you know, they goes out with the maids for a walk. From twelve till three is good again, and then from six till nine; that’s because the children are mostly at home at them hours. We make much more by horders for performance houtside the gennelmen’s houses, than we do by performing in public in the hopen streets. Monday is the best day for street business; Friday is no day at all, because then the poor people has spent all their money. If we was to pitch on a Friday, we shouldn’t take a halfpenny in the streets, so we in general on that day goes round for horders. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday is the best days for us with horders at gennelmen’s houses. We do much better in the spring than at any other time in the year, excepting holiday time, at Midsummer and Christmas. That’s what we call Punch’s season. We do most at hevening parties in the holiday time, and if there’s a pin to choose between them, I should say Christmas holidays was the best. For attending hevening parties now we generally get one pound and our refreshments—as much more as they like to give us. But the business gets slacker and slacker every season. Where I went to ten parties twenty years ago, I don’t go to two now. People isn’t getting tired of our performances, but stingier—that’s it. Everybody looks at their money now afore they parts with it, and gennelfolks haggles and cheapens us down to shillings and sixpences, as if they was guineas in the holden time. Our business is werry much like hackney-coach work; we do best in vet vether. It looks like rain this evening, and I’m uncommon glad on it, to be sure. You see, the vet keeps the children in-doors all day, and then they wants something to quiet ’em a bit; and the mothers and fathers, to pacify the dears, gives us a horder to perform. It mustn’t rain cats and dogs—that’s as bad as no rain at all. What we likes is a regular good, steady Scotch mist, for then we takes double what we takes on other days. In summer we does little or nothing; the children are out all day enjoying themselves in the parks. The best pitch of all in London is Leicester-square; there’s all sorts of classes, you see, passing there. Then comes Regent-street (the corner of Burlington-street is uncommon good, and there’s a good publican there besides). Bond-street ain’t no good now. Oxford-street, up by Old Cavendish-street, or Oxford-market, or Wells-street, are all favourite pitches for Punch. We don’t do much in the City. People has their heads all full of business there, and them as is greedy arter the money ain’t no friend of Punch’s. Tottenham-court-road, the New-road, and all the henvirons of London, is pretty good. Hampstead, tho’, ain’t no good; they’ve got too poor there. I’d sooner not go out at all than to Hampstead. Belgrave-square, and all about that part, is uncommon good; but where there’s many chapels Punch won’t do at all. I did once, though, strike up hopposition to a street preacher wot was a holding forth in the New-road and did uncommon well. All his flock, as he called ’em, left him, and come over to look at me. Punch and preaching is two different creeds—hopposition parties, I may say. We in generally walks from twelve to twenty mile every day, and carries the show, which weighs a good half-hundred, at the least. Arter great exertion, our woice werry often fails us; for speaking all day through the ‘call’ is werry trying, ’specially when we are chirruping up so as to bring the children to the vinders. The boys is the greatest nuisances we has to contend with. Wherever we goes we are sure of plenty of boys for a hindrance; but they’ve got no money, bother ’em! and they’ll follow us for miles, so that we’re often compelled to go miles to awoid ’em. Many parts is swarming with boys, such as Vitechapel. Spitalfields, that’s the worst place for boys I ever come a-near; they’re like flies in summer there, only much more thicker. I never shows my face within miles of them parts. Chelsea, again, has an uncommon lot of boys; and wherever we know the children swarm, there’s the spots we makes a point of awoiding. Why, the boys is such a hobstruction to our performance, that often we are obliged to drop the curtain for ’em. They’ll throw one another’s caps into the frame while I’m inside on it, and do what we will, we can’t keep ’em from poking their fingers through the baize and making holes to peep through. Then they will keep tapping the drum; but the worst of all is, the most of ’em ain’t got a farthing to bless themselves with, and they will shove into the best places. Soldiers, again, we don’t like, they’ve got no money—no, not even so much as pockets, sir. Nusses ain’t no good. Even if the mothers of the dear little children has given ’em a penny to spend, why the nusses takes it from ’em, and keeps it for ribbins. Sometimes we can coax a penny out of the children, but the nusses knows too much to be gammoned by us. Indeed, servants in generally don’t do the thing what’s right to us—some is good to us, but the most of ’em will have poundage out of what we gets. About sixpence out of every half-crown is what the footman takes from us. We in generally goes into the country in the summer time for two or three months. Watering-places is werry good in July and August. Punch mostly goes down to the sea-side with the quality. Brighton, though, ain’t no account; the Pavilion’s done up with, and therefore Punch has discontinued his visits. We don’t put up at the trampers’ houses on our travels, but in generally inns is where we stays; because we considers ourselves to be above the other showmen and mendicants. At one lodging-house as I stopped at once in Warwick, there was as many as fifty staying there what got their living by street performances—the greater part were Italian boys and girls. There are altogether as many as sixteen Punch-and-Judy frames in England. Eight of these is at work in London, and the other eight in the country; and to each of these frames there are two men. We are all acquainted with one another; are all sociable together, and know where each other is, and what they are a-doing on. When one comes home, another goes out; that’s the way we proceed through life. It wouldn’t do for two to go to the same place. If two of us happens to meet at one town, we jine, and shift pardners, and share the money. One goes one way, and one another, and we meet at night, and reckon up over a sociable pint or a glass. We shift pardners so as each may know how much the other has taken. It’s the common practice for the man what performs Punch to share with the one wot plays the drum and pipes—each has half wot is collected; but if the pardner can’t play the drum and pipes, and only carries the frame, and collects, then his share is but a third of what is taken till he learns how to perform himself. The street performers of London lives mostly in little rooms of their own; they has generally wives, and one or two children, who are brought up to the business. Some lives about the Westminster-road, and St. George’s East. A great many are in Lock’s-fields—they are all the old school that way. Then some, or rather the principal part of the showmen, are to be found about Lisson-grove. In this neighbourhood there is a house of call, where they all assembles in the evening. There are a very few in Brick-lane, Spitalfields, now; that is mostly deserted by showmen. The West-end is the great resort of all; for it’s there the money lays, and there the showmen abound. We all know one another, and can tell in what part of the country the others are. We have intelligence by letters from all parts. There’s a Punch I knows on now is either in the Isle of Man, or on his way to it.”

“‘Bona parlare’ means language; name of patter. ‘Yeute munjare’—no food. ‘Yeute lente’—no bed. ‘Yeute bivare’—no drink. I’ve ‘yeute munjare,’ and ‘yeute bivare,’ and, what’s worse, ‘yeute lente.’ This is better than the costers’ talk, because that ain’t no slang at all, and this is a broken Italian, and much higher than the costers’ lingo. We know what o’clock it is, besides.”

“‘How are you getting on?’ I might say to another Punchman. ‘Ultra cateva,’ he’d say. If I was doing a little, I’d say, ‘Bonar.’ Let us have a ‘shant a bivare’—pot o’ beer. If we has a good pitch we never tell one another, for business is business. If they know we’ve a ‘bonar’ pitch, they’ll oppose, which makes it bad.

“‘Co. and Co.’ is our term for partner, or ‘questa questa,’ as well. ‘Ultray cativa,’—no bona. ‘Slumareys’—figures, frame, scenes, properties. ‘Slum’—call, or unknown tongue. ‘Ultray cativa slum’—not a good call. ‘Tambora’—drum; that’s Italian. ‘Pipares’—pipes. ‘Questra homa a vardring the slum, scapar it, Orderly’—there’s someone a looking at the slum. Be off quickly. ‘Fielia’ is a child; ‘Homa’ is a man; ‘Dona,’ a female; ‘Charfering-homa’—talking-man, policeman. Policeman can’t interfere with us, we’re sanctioned. Punch is exempt out of the Police Act. Some’s very good men, and some on ’em are tyrants; but generally speaking they’re all werry kind to us, and allows us every privilege. That’s a flattery, you know, because you’d better not meddle with them. Civility always gains its esteem.”

The man here took a large clasp-knife out of his breeches pocket.

“This here knife is part of Punch’s tools or materials, of great utility, for it cannot be done without. The knife serves for a hammer, to draw nails and drive them in again, and is very handy on a country road to cut a beefsteak—not a mistake—Well, ye cannot cut a mistake, can ye?—and is a real poor man’s friend to a certainty.

“This here is the needle that completes our tools (takes out a needle from inside his waistcoat collar,) and is used to sew up our cativa stumps, that is, Punch’s breeches and Judy’s petticoats, and his master’s old clothes when they’re in holes. I likes to have everything tidy and respectable, not knowing where I’m going to perform to, for every day is a new day that we never see afore and never shall see again; we do not know the produce of this world, being luxurant (that’s moral), being humane, kind, and generous to all our society of life. We mends our cativa and slums when they gets teearey (if you was to show that to some of our line they’d be horrified; they can’t talk so affluent, you know, in all kinds of black slums). Under the hedgeares, and were no care varder us questa—‘questa’ is a shirt—pronunciation for questra homa.

“Once, too, when I was scarpering with my culling in the monkey, I went to mendare the cativa slums in a churchyard, and sat down under the tombs to stitch ’em up a bit, thinking no one would varder us there. But Mr. Crookshank took us off there as we was a sitting. I know I’m the same party, ’cos Joe seen the print you know and draw’d quite nat’ral, as now in print, with the slumares a laying about on all the tombstones round us.”

“I used often when a youth to be very fond of plays and romances, and frequently went to theatres to learn knowledge, of which I think there is a deal of knowledge to be learnt from those places (that gives the theatres a touch—helps them on a bit). I was very partial and fond of seeing Romeau and Juliet; Otheller; and the Knights of St. John, and the Pretty Gal of Peerlesspool; Macbeth and the Three Dancing Witches. Don Goovarney pleased me best of all though. What took me uncommon were the funeral purcession of Juliet—it affects the heart, and brings us to our nat’ral feelings. I took my ghost from Romeau and Juliet; the ghost comes from the grave, and it’s beautiful. I used to like Kean, the principal performer. Oh, admirable! most admirable he were, and especially in Otheller, for then he was like my Jim Crow here, and was always a great friend and supporter of his old friend Punch. Otheller murders his wife, ye know, like Punch does. Otheller kills her, ’cause the green-eyed monster has got into his ’art, and he being so extremely fond on her; but Punch kills his’n by accident, though he did not intend to do it, for the Act of Parliament against husbands beating wives was not known in his time. A most excellent law that there, for it causes husbands and wives to be kind and natural one with the other, all through the society of life. Judy irritates her husband, Punch, for to strike the fatal blow, vich at the same time, vith no intention to commit it, not knowing at the same time, being rather out of his mind, vot he vas about. I hope this here will be a good example both to men and wives, always to be kind and obleeging to each other, and that will help them through the mainder with peace and happiness, and will rest in peace with all mankind (that’s moral). It must be well worded, ye know, that’s my beauty.”

“Always Mr. Punch, when he performs to any nobleman’s juvenile parties, he requires a little refreshment and sperrits before commencing, because the performance will go far superior. But where teetotallers is he plays very mournful, and they don’t have the best parts of the dramatical performance. Cos pump vater gives a person no heart to exhibit his performance, where if any sperrits is given to him he woold be sure to give the best of satisfaction. I likes where I goes to perform for the gennelman to ring the bell, and say to the butler to bring this here party up whatever he chooses. But Punch is always moderate; he likes one eye wetted, then the tother after; but he likes the best: not particular to brandy, for fear of his nose of fading, and afeerd of his losing the colour. All theatrical people, and even the great Edmund Kean, used to take a drop before commencing performance, and Punch must do the same, for it enlivens his sperrits, cheers his heart up, and enables him to give the best of satisfaction imaginable.”

“There are hoperas and romarnces. A romarnce is far different to a hopera, you know; for one is interesting, and the other is dull and void of apprehension. The romance is the interesting one, and of the two I likes it the best; but let every one speak as they find—that’s moral. Jack Sheppard, you know, is a romarnce, and a fine one; but Punch is a hopera—a huproar, we calls it, and the most pleasing and most interesting of all as was ever produced, Punch never was beat and never will, being the oldest performance for many hundred years, and now handed down to prosperity (there’s a fine moral in it, too).

“The history or origination of Punch—(never put yerself out of yer way for me, I’m one of the happiest men in existence, and gives no trouble)—is taken from Italy, and brought over to England by Porsini, and exhibited in the streets of London for the first time from sixty to seventy years ago; though he was not the first man who exhibited, for there was a female here before him, but not to perform at all in public—name unknown, but handed down to prosperity. She brought the figures and frame over with her, but never showed ’em—keeping it an unknown secret. Porsini came from Hitaly, and landed in England, and exhibited his performance in the streets of London, and realized an immense sum of money. Porsini always carried a rum-bottle in his pocket (’cause Punch is a rum fellow, ye see, and he’s very fond of rum), and drinked out of this unbeknown behind the baize afore he went into the frame, so that it should lay in his power to give the audience a most excellent performance. He was a man as gave the greatest satisfaction, and he was the first man that brought a street horgan into England from Hitaly. His name is handed down to prosperity among all classes of society in life.

“At first, the performance was quite different then to what it is now. It was all sentimental then, and very touching to the feelings, and full of good morals. The first part was only made up of the killing of his wife and babby, and the second with the execution of the hangman and killing of the devil—that was the original drama of Punch, handed down to prosperity for 800 years. The killing of the devil makes it one of the most moral plays as is, for it stops Satan’s career of life, and then we can all do as we likes afterwards.

“Porsini lived like the first nobleman in the land, and realized an immense deal of money during his lifetime; we all considered him to be our forefather. He was a very old man when he died. I’ve heard tell he used to take very often as much as 10l. a-day, and now it’s come down to little more than 10d.; and he used to sit down to his fowls and wine, and the very best of luxuriousness, like the first nobleman in the world, such as a bottle of wine, and cetera. At last he reduced himself to want, and died in the workhouse. Ah! poor fellow, he didn’t ought to have been let die where he did, but misfortunes will happen to all—that’s moral. Every one in London knowed him: lords, dukes, squires, princes, and wagabones, all used to stop and laugh at his pleasing and merry interesting performance; and a funny old fellow he was, and so fond of his snuff. His name is writ in the annuals of history, and handed down as long as grass grows and water runs—for when grass ceases to grow, ye know, and water ceases to run, this world will be no utility; that’s moral.

“Pike, the second noted street performer of Punch, was Porsini’s apprentice, and he succeeded him after his career. He is handed down as a most clever exhibitor of Punch and showman—’cause he used to go about the country with waggons, too. He exhibited the performance for many years, and at last came to decay, and died in the workhouse. He was the first inventor of the live dog called Toby, and a great invention it was, being a great undertaking of a new and excellent addition to Punch’s performance—that’s well worded—we must place the words in a superior manner to please the public.

“Then if, as you see, all our forefathers went to decay and died in the workhouse, what prospect have we to look forward to before us at the present time but to share the same fate, unless we meet with sufficient encouragement in this life? But hoping it will not be so, knowing that there is a new generation and a new exhibition, we hope the public at large will help and assist, and help us to keep our head above water, so that we shall never float down the river Thames, to be picked up, carried in a shell, coroner’s inquest held, taken to the workhouse, popped into the pithole, and there’s an end to another poor old Punch—that’s moral.

“A footman is far superior to a showman, ’cause a showman is held to be of low degrade, and are thought as such, and so circumstantiated as to be looked upon as a mendicant; but still we are not, for collecting ain’t begging, it’s only selliciting; ’cause parsons, you know (I gives them a rub here), preaches a sermon and collects at the doors, so I puts myself on the same footing as they—that’s moral, and it’s optional, ye know. If I takes a hat round, they has a plate, and they gets sovereigns where we has only browns; but we are thankful for all, and always look for encouragement, and hopes kind support from all classes of society in life.

“Punch has two kind of performances—short shows and long ones, according to denare. Short shows are for cativa denare, and long pitches for the bona denare. At the short shows we gets the ha’pence and steps it—scafare, as we say; and at the long pitches ve keeps it up for half an hour, or an hour, maybe—not particular, if the browns tumble in well—for we never leave off while there’s a major solde (that’s a halfpenny), or even a quartereen (that’s a farden), to be made. The long pitches we fixes at the principal street-corners of London. We never turn away nothink.

“‘Boys, look up your fardens,’ says the outside man; ‘it ain’t half over yet, and we’ll show it all through.’

“Punch is like the income-tax gatherer, takes all we can get, and never turns away nothink—that is our moral. Punch is like the rest of the world, he has got bad morals, but very few of them. The showman inside the frame says, while he’s a working the figures, ‘Culley, how are you a getting on?’ ‘Very inferior indeed, I’m sorry to say, master. The company, though very respectable, seems to have no pence among ’em.’ ‘What quanta denare have you chafered?’ I say. ‘Soldi major quartereen;’ that means, three halfpence three fardens; ‘that is all I have accumulated amongst this most respectable and numerous company.’ ‘Never mind, master, the showman will go on; try the generosity of the public once again.’ ‘Well, I think it’s of very little utility to collect round again, for I’ve met with that poor encouragement.’ ‘Never mind, master, show away. I’ll go round again and chance my luck; the ladies and gentlemen have not seen sufficient, I think. Well, master, I’ve got tres major’—that is, three half-pence—‘more, and now it’s all over this time. Boys, go home and say your prayers,’ we says, and steps it. Such scenes of life we see! No person would hardly credit what we go through. We travel often yeute munjare (no food), and oftentimes we’re in fluence, according as luck runs.

“We now principally dwells on orders at noblemen’s houses. The sebubs of London pays us far better than the busy town of London. When we are dwelling on orders, we goes along the streets chirripping ‘Roo-tooerovey ooey-ooey-ooerovey;’ that means, Any more wanted? that’s the pronounciation of the call in the old Italian style. Toorovey-to-roo-to-roo-toroo-torooey; that we does when we are dwelling for orders mostly at noblemen’s houses. It brings the juvenials to the window, and causes the greatest of attractions to the children of noblemen’s families, both rich and poor: lords, dukes, earls, and squires, and gentlefolks.

“‘Call-hunting,’—that’s another term for dwelling on orders—pays better than pitching; but orders is wery casual, and pitching is a certainty. We’re sure of a brown or two in the streets, and noblemen’s work don’t come often. We must have it authentick, for we travels many days and don’t succeed in getting one; at other times we are more fluent; but when both combine together, it’s merely a living, after all’s said and done, by great exertion and hard perseverance and asidity, for the business gets slacker and slacker every year, and I expect at last it will come to the dogs—not Toby, because he is dead and gone. People isn’t getting tired with our performances; they’re more delighted than ever; but they’re stingier. Everybody looks twice at their money afore they parts with it.—That’s a rub at the mean ones, and they wants it uncommon bad.

“And then, sometimes the blinds is all drawed down, on account of the sun, and that cooks our goose; or, it’s too hot for people to stop and varder—that means, see. In the cold days, when we pitch, people stops a few minutes, drops their browns, and goes away about their business, to make room for more. The spring of the year is the best of the four seasons for us.

“A sailor and a lass half-seas over we like best of all. He will tip his mag. We always ensure a few pence, and sometimes a shilling, of them. We are fond of sweeps, too; they’re a sure brown, if they’ve got one, and they’ll give before many a gentleman. But what we can’t abide nohow is the shabby genteel—them altray cativa, and no mistake: for they’ll stand with their mouths wide open, like a nut-cracker, and is never satisfied, and is too grand even to laugh. It’s too much trouble to carry ha’pence, and they’ve never no change, or else they’d give us some; in fact, they’ve no money at all, they wants it all for, &c.”

“This is Punch; this his wife, Judy. They never was married, not for this eight hundred years—in the original drama. It is a drama in two acts, is Punch. There was a Miss Polly, and she was Punch’s mistress, and dressed in silks and satins. Judy catches Punch with her, and that there causes all the disturbance. Ah, it’s a beautiful history; there’s a deal of morals with it, and there’s a large volume wrote about it. It’s to be got now.

“This here is Judy, their only child. She’s three years old come to-morrow, and heir to all his estate, which is only a saucepan without a handle.

“Well, then I brings out the Beadle.

“Punch’s nose is the hornament to his face. It’s a great walue, and the hump on his back is never to be got rid on, being born with him, and never to be done without. Punch was silly and out of his mind—which is in the drama—and the cause of his throwing his child out of winder, vich he did. Judy went out and left him to nurse the child, and the child gets so terrible cross he gets out of patience, and tries to sing a song to it, and ends by chucking it into the street.

“Punch is cunning, and up to all kinds of antics, if he ain’t out of his mind. Artful like. My opinion of Punch is, he’s very incentric, with good and bad morals attached. Very good he was in regard to benevolence; because, you see, in the olden style there was a blind man, and he used to come and ax charity of him, and Punch used to pity him and give him a trifle, you know. This is in the olden style, from Porsini you know.

“The carving on his face is a great art, and there’s only one man as does it reg’lar. His nose and chin, by meeting together, we thinks the great beauty. Oh, he’s admirable!—He was very fond of hisself when he was alive. His name was Punchinello, and we calls him Punch. That’s partly for short and partly on account of the boys, for they calls it Punch in hell O. ‘Oh, there’s Punch in hell,’ they’d say, and gennelfolks don’t like to hear them words.

“Punch has very small legs and small arms. It’s quite out of portion, in course; but still it’s nature, for folks with big bellies generally has thin pins of their own.

“His dress has never been altered; the use of his high hat is to show his half-foolish head, and the other parts is after the best olden fashion.

“Judy, you see, is very ugly. She represents Punch; cos, you see, if the two comes together, it generally happens that they’re summat alike; and you see it’s because his wife were so ugly that he had a mistress. You see, a head like that there wouldn’t please most people.

“The mistress, Polly, dances with Punch, just like a lady in a drawing-room. There ain’t no grievance between him and Judy on account of Miss Polly, as she’s called. That’s the olden style of all, cos Judy don’t know nothing about it.

“Miss Polly was left out because it wasn’t exactly moral; opinions has changed: we ain’t better, I fancy. Such things goes on, but people don’t like to let it be seen now, that’s the difference.

“Judy’s dress, you see, is far different, bless you, than Miss Polly’s. Judy’s, you see, is bed-furniture stuff, and Polly’s all silk and satin. Yes, that’s the way of the world,—the wife comes off second-best.

“The baby’s like his father, he’s his pet all over and the pride of his heart; wouldn’t take all the world for it, you know, though he does throw him out of window. He’s got his father’s nose, and is his daddy all over, from the top of his head to the tip of his toe. He never was weaned.

“Punch, you know, is so red through drink. He’d look nothing if his nose were not deep scarlet. Punch used to drink hard one time, and so he does now if he can get it. His babby is red all the same, to correspond.

“This is the Beadle of the parish, which tries to quell all disturbances but finds it impossible to do it. The Beadle has got a very reddish nose. He is a very severe, harsh man, but Punch conquers him. Ye see, he’s dressed in the olden style—a brown coat, with gold lace and cock’d hat and all. He has to take Punch up for killing his wife and babby; but Punch beats the Beadle, for every time he comes up he knocks him down.

“This next one is the merry Clown, what tries his rig with Punch, up and down—that’s a rhyme, you see. This is the merry Clown, that tries his tricks all round. This here’s the new style, for we dwells more on the comical now. In the olden time we used to have a scaramouch with a chalk head. He used to torment Punch and dodge him about, till at last Punch used to give him a crack on the head and smash it all to pieces, and then cry out—‘Oh dear, Oh dear; I didn’t go to do it—it was an accident, done on purpose.’ But now we do with Clown and the sausages. Scaramouch never talked, only did the ballet business, dumb motions; but the Clown speaks theatrical, comic business and sentimental. Punch being silly and out of his mind, the Clown persuades Punch that he wants something to eat. The Clown gets into the public-house to try what he can steal. He pokes his head out of the window and says, ‘Here you are, here you are;’ and then he asks Punch to give him a helping hand, and so makes Punch steal the sausages. They’re the very best pork-wadding sausages, made six years ago and warranted fresh, and ’ll keep for ever.

“This here’s the poker, about which the Clown says, ‘Would you like something hot?’ Punch says ‘Yes,’ and then the Clown burns Punch’s nose, and sits down on it himself and burns his breeches. Oh, it’s a jolly lark when I shows it. Clown says to Punch, ‘Don’t make a noise, you’ll wake the landlord up.’ The landlord, you see, pretends to be asleep.

“Clown says, ‘You mustn’t hollar.’ ‘No,’ says Punch, ‘I wont;’ and still he hollars all the louder.

“This is Jim Crow: ye see he’s got a chain but he’s lost his watch. He let it fall on Fish-street Hill, the other day, and broke it all to pieces. He’s a nigger. He says, ‘Me like ebery body;’ not ‘every,’ but ‘ebery,’ cos that’s nigger. Instead of Jim Crow we used formerly to show the Grand Turk of Sinoa, called Shallaballah. Sinoa is nowhere, for he’s only a substance yer know. I can’t find Sinoa, although I’ve tried, and thinks it’s at the bottom of the sea where the black fish lays.

“Jim Crow sprung from Rice from America, he brought it over here. Then, ye see, being a novelty, all classes of society is pleased. Everybody liked to hear ‘Jim Crow’ sung, and so we had to do it. The people used to stand round, and I used to take some good money with it too, sir, on Hay-hill. Everybody’s funny now-a-days, and they like comic business. They won’t listen to anything sensible or sentimental, but they wants foolishness. The bigger fool gets the most money. Many people says, ‘What a fool, you must look!’ at that I put my head back. ‘Come on.’ ‘I shan’t. I shall stop a little longer.’

“This is the Ghost, that appears to Punch for destroying his wife and child. She’s the ghost of the two together, or else, by rights, there ought to be a little ghost as well, but we should have such a lot to carry about. But Punch, being surprised at the ghost, falls into exstericks—represented as such. Punch is really terrified, for he trembles like a haspen leaf, cos he never killed his wife. He’s got no eyes and no teeth, and can’t see out of his mouth; or cannot, rather. Them cant words ain’t grammatical. When Punch sees the Ghost he lays down and kicks the bucket, and represents he’s dead.

“The Ghost is very effective, when it comes up very solemn and mournful-like in Romeau and Juliet. I took it from that, yer know: there’s a ghost in that when she comes out of the grave. Punch sits down on his seat and sings his merry song of olden times, and don’t see the Ghost till he gets a tap on the cheek, and then he thinks it’s somebody else; instead of that, when he turns round, he’s most terrible alarmed, putting his arms up and out. The drum goes very shaky when the Ghost comes up. A little bit of ‘The Dead March in Saul,’ or ‘Home, sweet Home:’ anything like that, slow. We none on us likes to be hurried to the grave.

“I now takes up the Doctor. This is the Doctor that cures all sick maids and says, ‘Taste of my drugs before you die, you’ll say they are well made.’ The Doctor always wears a white ermine wig: rabbit skin wouldn’t do, we can’t go so common as that; it’s most costly, cos it was made for him.

“After the Ghost has appeared Punch falls down, and calls loudly for the Doctor, and offers 50,000l. for one; then the Doctor feels his pulse and says, ‘Very unfortunate misfortune! I have forgot my spectacles, cos I never had none. I can see all through it—the man’s not dead.’

“The Doctor gives Punch physic. That’s stick-lickerish wot he subscribes for him; but Punch don’t like it, though it’s a capital subscription for a cure for the head-ache. (I dare say, Mr. Mayhew, sir, you thinks me a very funny fellow.) Punch tries to pay the Doctor back with his own physic, but he misses him every time. Doctors don’t like to take their own stuff anyhow.

“This is the Publican as Punch steals the sausages from; he used to be the Grand Turk of Senoa, or Shallaballah, afore the fashion changed—for a new world always wants new things: the people are like babies, they must have a fresh toy ye know, and every day is a new day that we never seed before.—There’s a moral for you; it’ll make a beautiful book when you comes to have the morals explained. Ye see you might still fancy Punch was the Grand Turk, for he’s got his moustaches still; but they’re getting so fashionable that even the publicans wears ’em, so it don’t matter.

“This tall figure is the hangman and finisher of the law, as does the business in the twinkling of a bed-post. He’s like the income-tax gatherer, he takes all in and lets none out, for a guilty conscience needs no accusing. Punch being condemned to suffer by the laws of his country, makes a mistake for once in his life, and always did, and always will keep a-doing it. Therefore, by cunningness and artfulness, Punch persuades Jack Ketch to show him the way—which he very ‘willingly doeth’—to slip his head into the noose, when Punch takes the opportunity to pull the rope, after he has shown him the way, and is exempt for once more, and quite free.

“Now this is the coffin, and this is the pall. Punch is in a great way, after he’s hung the man, for assistance, when he calls his favourite friend Joey Grimaldi, the clown, to aid and assist him, because he’s afeard that he’ll be taken for the crime wot he’s committed. Then the body is placed in the coffin; but as the undertaker ain’t made it long enough, they have to double him up. The undertaker requests permission to git it altered. Ye see it’s a royal coffin, with gold, and silver, and copper nails; with no plates, and scarlet cloth, cos that’s royalty. The undertaker’s forgot the lid of the coffin, ye see: we don’t use lids, cos it makes them lighter to carry.

“This is the pall that covers him over, to keep the flies from biting him. We call it St. Paul’s. Don’t you see, palls and Paul’s is the same word, with a s to it: it’s comic. That ’ud make a beautiful play, that would. Then we take out the figures, as I am doing now, from the box, and they exaunt with a dance. ‘Here’s somebody a-coming, make haste!’ the Clown says, and then they exaunt, you know, or go off.

“This here is the Scaramouch that dances without a head, and yet has got a head that’ll reach from here to St. Paul’s; but it’s scarcely ever to be seen. Cos his father was my mother, don’t ye see. Punch says that it’s a beautiful figure. I’ve only made it lately. Instead of him we used to have a nobody. The figure is to be worked with four heads, that’s to say one coming out of each arm, one from the body, and one from the neck. (He touches each part as he speaks.) Scaramouch is old-fashioned newly revived. He comes up for a finish, yer know. This figure’s all for dancing, the same as the ghost is, and don’t say nothing. Punch being surprised to see such a thing, don’t know what to make on it. He bolts away, for ye see (whispering and putting up two hands first, and then using the other, as if working Scaramouch), I wants my two hands to work him. After Punch goes away the figure dances to amuse the public, then he exaunts, and Punch comes up again for to finish the remainder part of his performance. He sings as if he’d forgot all that’s gone before, and wishes only to amuse the public at large. That’s to show his silliness and simplicity. He sings comic or sentimental, such as ‘God save the Queen;’—that’s sentimental; or ‘Getting up stairs and playing on the fiddle;’ or ‘Dusty Bob;’ or ‘Rory O’More, with the chill off;’—them’s all comic, but ‘the Queen’s’ sentimental.

“This here is Satan,—we might say the devil, but that ain’t right, and gennelfolks don’t like such words. He is now commonly called ‘Spring-heeled Jack;’ or the ‘Roosian Bear,’—that’s since the war. Ye see he’s chained up for ever; for if yer reads, it says somewhere in the Scripture that he’s bound down for two thousand years. I used to read it myself once; and the figure shows ye that he’s chained up never to be let loose no more. He comes up at the last and shows himself to Punch, but it ain’t continued long, yer know, the figure being too frightful for people to see without being frightened; unless we are on comic business and showing him as Spring-heeled Jack, or the Roosian Bear; and then we keeps him up a long time. Punch kills him, puts him on the top of his stick, and cries, ‘Hooray! the devil’s dead, and we can all do as we like! Good-by, farewell, and it’s all over!’ But the curtain don’t come down, cos we haven’t got none.

“This here’s the bell. Stop a minute, I forgot: this is Punch’s comic music, commonly called a peanner sixty,—not peanner forty, cos Punch wants something out of the common way,—and it plays fifty tunes all at once. This is the bell which he uses to rattle in the publican’s ears when he’s asleep, and wakes his children all up after the nuss as put ’em to bed. All this is to show his foolishness and simplicity; for it’s one of his foolish tricks and frolics for to amuse himself: but he’s a chap as won’t stand much nonsense from other people, because his morals are true, just, right, and sound; although he does kill his wife and baby, knock down the Beadle, Jack Ketch, and the Grand Signor, and puts an end to the very devil himself.”

“‘Ladies and gents,’ the man says outside the show, afore striking up, ‘I’m now going to exhibit a preformance worthy of your notice, and far superior to anythink you hever had a hopportunity of witnessing of before.’ (I am a doing it now, sir, as if I was addressing a company of ladies and gentlemen, he added, by way of parenthesis.) ‘This is the original preformance of Punch, ladies and gents; and it will always gain esteem. I am going to hintroduce a preformance worthy of your notice, which is the dramatical preformance of the original and old-established preformance of Punch, experienced many year. I merely call your attention, ladies and gents, to the novel attraction which I’m now about to hintroduce to you.

“‘I only merely place this happyratus up to inform you what I am about to preform to you. The preformance will continue for upwards of one hour—provising as we meets with sufficient encouragement. (That’s business, ye know, master; just to give ’em to understand that we wants a little assistance afore we begins.) It will surpass anythink you’ve had the hopportunity of witnessing of before in all the hannuals of history. I hope, ladies and gents, I am not talking too grammatical for some of you.’

“That there is the address, sir,” he continued, “what I always gives to the audience outside before I begins to preform—just to let the respectable company know that I am a working for to get my living by honest industry.

“‘Those ladies and gents,’ he then went on, as if addressing an imaginary crowd, ‘what are a-standing round, a-looking at the preformance, will, I hope, be as willing to give as they is to see. There’s many a lady and gent now at the present moment standing around me, perhaps, whose hearts might be good though not in their power.’ (This is Punch’s patter, yer know, outside; and when you has to say all that yourself, you wants the affluency of a methodist parson to do the talk, I can tell ye.) ‘Now boys, look up yer ha’pence! Who’s got a farden or a ha’penny? and I’ll be the first brown towards it. I ain’t particular if it’s a half-crown. Now, my lads, feel in your pockets and see if you’ve got an odd copper. Here’s one, and who’ll be the next to make it even? We means to show it all through, provising we meets with sufficient encouragement.’ (I always sticks to them words, ‘sufficient encouragement.’) ‘You’ll have the pleasure of seeing Spring-heeled Jack, or the Roosian Bear, and the comical scene with Joey the clown, and the fryingpan of sassages!’ (That’s a kind of gaggery.)

“I’ll now just explain to you, sir, the different parts of the frame. This here’s the letter-cloth, which shows you all what we performs. Sometimes we has wrote on it—

THE DOMINION OF FANCY,
or,
Punch’s Opera:

that fills up a letter-cloth; and Punch is a fancy for every person, you know, whoever may fancy it. I stands inside here on this footboard; and if there’s any one up at the winders in the street, I puts my foot longways, so as to keep my nob out of sight. This here is the stage front, or proceedings (proscenium), and is painted over with flags and banners, or any different things. Sometimes there’s George and the Dragging, and the Rile Queen’s Arms, (we can have them up when we like, cos we are sanctioned, and I’ve played afore the rile princes). But anything for freshness. People’s tired of looking at the Rile Arms, and wants something new to cause attraction, and so on.

“This here’s the playboard, where sits Punch. The scenes behind are representing a garding scene, and the side-scenes is a house and a cottage—they’re for the exaunts, you know, just for convenience. The back scene draws up, and shows the prison, with the winders all cut out, and the bars showing, the same as there is to a gaol; though I never was in one in my life, and I’ll take good care I never shall be.

“Our speaking instrument is an unknown secret, cos it’s an ‘unknown tongue,’ that’s known to none except those in our own purfession. It’s a hinstrument like this which I has in my hand, and it’s tuned to music. We has two or three kinds, one for out-doors, one for in-doors, one for speaking, one for singing, and one that’s good for nothing, except selling on the cheap. They ain’t whistles, but ‘calls,’ or ‘unknown tongues;’ and with them in the mouth we can pronounce each word as plain as a parson, and with as much affluency.

“The great difficulty in preforming Punch consists in speaking with this call in the mouth—cos it’s produced from the lungs: it’s all done from there, and is a great strain, and requires sucktion—and that’s brandy-and-water, or summat to moisten the whistle with.

“We’re bound not to drink water by our purfession, when we can get anything stronger. It weakens the nerves, but we always like to keep in the bounds of propriety, respectability, and decency. I drinks my beer with my call in my mouth, and never takes it out, cos it exposes it, and the boys (hang ’em!) is so inquisitive. They runs after us, and looks up in our face to see how we speaks; but we drives ’em away with civility.

“Punch is a dramatical performance, sir, in two acts, patronised by the nobility and gentry at large. We don’t drop the scene at the end of the first act, the drum and pipes strikes up instead. The first act we consider to end with Punch being took to prison for the murder of his wife and baby. You can pick out a good many Punch preformers, without getting one so well versed as I am in it; they in general makes such a muffing concern of it. A drama, or dramatical preformance, we calls it, of the original preformance of Punch. It ain’t a tragedy; it’s both comic and sentimental, in which way we think proper to preform it. There’s comic parts, as with the Clown and Jim Crow, and cetera—that’s including a deal more, yer know.

“It’s a pretty play Punch is, when preformed well, and one of the greatest novelties in the world; and most ancient; handed down, too, for many hundred years.

“The prison scene and the baby is what we calls the sentimental touches. Some folks where I preforms will have it most sentimental, in the original style. Them families is generally sentimental theirselves. To these sentimental folks I’m obliged to preform werry steady and werry slow; they won’t have no ghost, no coffin, and no devil; and that’s what I call spiling the preformance entirely. Ha, ha!” he added, with a deep sigh, “it’s the march of intellect that’s a doing all this: it is, sir.

“Other folks is all for the comic, specially the street people; and then we has to dwell on the bell scene, and the nursing the baby, and the frying-pan, and the sassages, and Jim Crow.

“A few years ago Toby was all the go. Formerly the dog was only a stuffed figure, and it was Mr. Pike what first hit upon introducing a live animal; and a great hit it war. It made a surprising alteration in the exhibition, for till lately the preformance was called Punch and Toby as well. We used to go about the streets with three dogs, and that was admirable, and it did uncommon well as a new novelty at first, but we can’t get three dogs to do it now. The mother of them dogs, ye see, was a singer, and had two pups what was singers too. Toby was wanted to sing and smoke a pipe as well, shake hands as well as seize Punch by the nose. When Toby was quiet, ye see, sir, it was the timidation of Punch’s stick, for directly he put it down he flew at him, knowing at the same time that Punch was not his master.

“Punch commences with a song. He does roo-too-rooey, and sings the ‘Lass of Gowrie’ down below, and then he comes up, saying, ‘Ooy-ey; Oh, yes, I’m a coming. How do you do, ladies and gents?’—ladies always first; and then he bows many times. ‘I’m so happy to see you,’ he says; ‘Your most obedient, most humble, and dutiful servant, Mr. Punch.’ (Ye see I can talk as affluent as can be with the call in my mouth.) ‘Ooy-ey, I wishes you all well and happy.’ Then Punch says to the drum-and-pipes man, as he puts his hand out, ‘How do you do, master?—play up; play up a hornpipe: I’m a most hexcellent dancer;’ and then Punch dances. Then ye see him a-dancing the hornpipe; and after that Punch says to the pipes, ‘Master, I shall call my wife up, and have a dance;’ so he sings out, ‘Judy, Judy! my pratty creetur! come up stairs, my darling! I want to speak to you’—and he knocks on the play-board.—‘Judy! Here she comes, bless her little heart!’

Enter Judy.

Punch. What a sweet creature! what a handsome nose and chin! (He pats her on the face very gently.)

Judy. (Slapping him.) Keep quiet, do!

Punch. Don’t be cross, my dear, but give me a kiss.

Judy. Oh, to be sure, my love. [They kiss.

Punch. Bless your sweet lips! (Hugging her.) This is melting moments. I’m very fond of my wife; we must have a dance.

Judy. Agreed. [They both dance.

Punch. Get out of the way! you don’t dance well enough for me. (He hits her on the nose.) Go and fetch the baby, and mind and take care of it, and not hurt it. [Judy exaunts.

Judy. (Returning back with baby.) Take care of the baby, while I go and cook the dumplings.

Punch. (Striking Judy with his right hand.) Get out of the way! I’ll take care of the baby. [Judy exaunts.

Punch (sits down and sings to the baby)—

[Baby cries.

Punch. (Shaking it.) What a cross boy! (He lays it down on the play-board, and rolls it backwards and forwards, to rock it to sleep, and sings again.)

(Punch continues rocking the child. It still cries, and he takes it up in his arms, saying, What a cross child! I can’t a-bear cross children. Then he vehemently shakes it, and knocks its head up against the side of the proceedings several times, representing to kill it, and he then throws it out of the winder.)

Enter Judy.

Judy. Where’s the baby?

Punch. (In a lemoncholy tone.) I have had a misfortune; the child was so terrible cross, I throwed it out of the winder. (Lemontation of Judy for the loss of her dear child. She goes into asterisks, and then excites and fetches a cudgel, and commences beating Punch over the head.)

Punch. Don’t be cross, my dear: I didn’t go to do it.

Judy. I’ll pay yer for throwing the child out of the winder. (She keeps on giving him knocks of the head, but Punch snatches the stick away, and commences an attack upon his wife, and beats her severely.)

Judy. I’ll go to the constable, and have you locked up.

Punch. Go to the devil. I don’t care where you go. Get out of the way! (Judy exaunts, and Punch then sings, “Cherry ripe,” or “Cheer, boys, cheer.” All before is sentimental, now this here’s comic. Punch goes through his roo-too-to-rooey, and then the Beadle comes up.)

Beadle. Hi! hallo, my boy!

Punch. Hello, my boy. (He gives him a wipe over the head with his stick, which knocks him down, but he gets up again.)

Beadle. Do you know, sir, that I’ve a special order in my pocket to take you up?

Punch. And I’ve a special order to knock you down. (He knocks him down with simplicity, but not with brutality, for the juvenial branches don’t like to see severity practised.)

Beadle. (Coming up again.) D’ye know, my boy, that I’ve an order to take you up?

Punch. And I’ve an order I tell ye to knock you down. (He sticks him. Punch is a tyrant to the Beadle, ye know, and if he was took up he wouldn’t go through his rambles, so in course he isn’t.)

Beadle. I’ve a warrant for you, my boy.

Punch. (Striking him.) And that’s a warrant for you, my boy. (The Beadle’s a determined man, ye know, and resolved to go to the ends of justice as far as possible in his power by special authority, so a quarrel enshoos between them.)

Beadle. You are a blackguard.

Punch. So are you.

(The Beadle hits Punch on the nose, and takes the law in his own hands. Punch takes it up momentary; strikes the Beadle, and a fight enshoos. The Beadle, faint and exhausted, gets up once more; then he strikes Punch over the nose, which is returned pro and con.)

Beadle. That’s a good ’un.

Punch. That’s a better.

Beadle. That’s a topper. (He hits him jolly hard.)

Punch. (With his cudgel.) That’s a wopper. (He knocks him out of his senses, and the Beadle exaunts.)

Enter Merry Clown.

Clown. No bono, allez tooti sweet, Mounseer. Look out sharp! Make haste! catch ’em alive! Here we are! how are you? good morning! don’t you wish you may get it? Ah! coward, strike a white man! (Clown keeps bobbing up and down, and Punch trying to hit all the time till Punch is exhausted nearly.)

(The Clown, ye see, sir, is the best friend to Punch, he carries him through all his tricks, and he’s a great favorite of Punch’s. He’s too cunning for him though, and knows too much for him, so they both shake hands and make it up.)

Clown. Now it’s all fair; ain’t it, Punch?

Punch. Yes.

Clown. Now I can begin again.

(You see, sir, the Clown gets over Punch altogether by his artful ways, and then he begins the same tricks over again; that is, if we wants a long performance; if not, we cuts it off at the other pint. But I’m telling you the real original style, sir.)

Clown. Good! you can’t catch me.

(Punch gives him one whack of the head, and Clown exaunts, or goes off.)

Enter Jim Crow.

Jim. What for you do that? Me nigger! me like de white man. Him did break my nose.

Punch. Humbly beg your pardon, I did not go to help it.

(For as it had been done, you know, it wasn’t likely he could help it after he’d done it—he couldn’t take it away from him again, could he?)

Jim. Me beg you de pardon. (For ye see, sir, he thinks he’s offended Punch.) Nebber mind, Punch, come and sit down, and we’ll hab a song.

Jim Crow prepares to sing.

Punch. Bravo, Jimmy! sing away, my boy—give us a stunner while you’re at it.

Jim sings.

Punch. (Tapping him on the head.) Bravo! well done, Jimmy! give us another bit of a song.

Jim. Yes, me will. [Sings again.

Jim hits Punch with his head over the nose, as if butting at him, while he repeats tum-tum-tum. Punch offended, beats him with the stick, and sings—

Jim. (Rising.) Oh mi! what for you strike a nigger? (Holding up his leg.) Me will poke your eye out. Ready—shoot—bang—fire. (Shoves his leg into Punch’s eye.)

Punch. He’s poked my eye out! I’ll look out for him for the future.

Jim Crow excites, or exaunts. Exaunt we calls it in our purfession, sir,—that’s going away, you know. He’s done his part, you know, and ain’t to appear again.

Judy has died through Punch’s ill usage after going for the Beadle, for if she’d done so before she could’nt ha’ fetched the constable, you know,—certainly not. The beholders only believe her to be dead though, for she comes to life again afterwards, because, if she was dead, it would do away with Punch’s wife altogether—for Punch is doatingly fond of her, though it’s only his fun after all’s said and done.

The Ghost, you see, is only a repersentation, as a timidation to soften his bad morals, so that he shouldn’t do the like again. The Ghost, to be sure, shows that she’s really dead for a time, but it’s not in the imitation; for if it was, Judy’s ghost (the figure) would be made like her.

The babby’s lost altogether. It’s killed. It is supposed to be destroyed entirely, but taken care of for the next time when called upon to preform—as if it were in the next world, you know,—that’s moral.

Enter Ghost. Punch sings meanwhile ‘Home, sweet Home.’ (This is original.) The Ghost repersents the ghost of Judy, because he’s killed his wife, don’t you see, the Ghost making her appearance; but Punch don’t know it at the moment. Still he sits down tired, and sings in the corner of the frame the song of “Home, sweet Home,” while the Sperrit appears to him.

Punch turns round, sees the Ghost, and is most terribly timidated. He begins to shiver and shake in great fear, bringing his guilty conscience to his mind of what he’s been guilty of doing, and at last he falls down in a fit of frenzy. Kicking, screeching, hollering, and shouting “Fifty thousand pounds for a doctor!” Then he turns on his side, and draws hisself double with the screwmatics in his gills. [Ghost excites.

Enter Doctor.

Punch is represented to be dead. This is the dying speech of Punch.

Doctor. Dear me! bless my heart! here have I been running as fast as ever I could walk, and very near tumbled over a straw. I heard somebody call most lustily for a doctor. Dear me (looking at Punch in all directions, and examining his body), this is my pertickler friend Mr. Punch; poor man! how pale he looks! I’ll feel his pulse (counts his pulse)—1, 2, 14, 9, 11. Hi! Punch, Punch, are you dead? are you dead? are you dead?

Punch. (Hitting him with his right hand over the nose, and knocking him back.) Yes.

Doctor. (Rubbing his nose with his hand.) I never heard a dead man speak before. Punch, you are not dead!

Punch. Oh, yes I am.

Doctor. How long have you been dead?

Punch. About six weeks.

Doctor. Oh, you’re not dead, you’re only poorly; I must fetch you a little reviving medicine, such as some stick-lickrish and balsam, and extract of shillalagh.

Punch. (Rising.) Make haste—(he gives the Doctor a wipe on the nose)—make haste and fetch it. [Doctor exaunts.

Punch. The Doctor going to get me some physic! I’m very fond of brandy-and-water, and rum-punch. I want my physic; the Doctor never brought me no physic at all. I wasn’t ill; it was only my fun. (Doctor reappears with the physic-stick, and he whacks Punch over the head no harder than he is able, and cries—)“There’s physic! physic! physic! physic! physic! pills! balsaam! stick-lickerish!”

Punch. (Rising and rubbing his head against the wing.) Yes; it is stick-lickrish.

(Ah! it’s a pretty play, sir, when it’s showed well—that it is—it’s delightful to read the morals; I am wery fond of reading the morals, I am.)

Punch. (Taking the stick from the Doctor.) Now, I’ll give you physic! physic! physic! (He strikes at the Doctor, but misses him every time.) The Doctor don’t like his own stuff.

Punch. (Presenting his stick, gun-fashion, at Doctor’s head.) I’ll shoot ye—one, two, three.

Doctor. (Closing with Punch.) Come to gaol along with me.

(He saves his own life by closing with Punch. He’s a desperate character is Punch, though he means no harm, ye know.) A struggle enshoos, and the Doctor calls for help, Punch being too powerful for him.

Doctor. Come to gaol! You shall repent for all your past misdeeds. Help! assistance! help, in the Queen’s name!

(He’s acting as a constable, the Doctor is, though he’s no business to do it; but he’s acting in self-defence. He didn’t know Punch, but he’d heard of his transactions, and when he came to examine him, he found it was the man. The Doctor is a very sedate kind of a person, and wishes to do good to all classes of the community at large, especially with his physic, which he gives gratis for nothink at all. The physic is called ‘Head-e-cologne, or a sure cure for the head-ache.’)

Re-enter Beadle. (Punch and the Doctor still struggling together.)

Beadle. (Closing with them.) Hi, hi! this is him; behold the head of a traitor! Come along! come to gaol!

Punch. (A-kicking.) I will not go.

Beadle. (Shouting.) More help! more help! more help! help! help! Come along to gaol! come along! come along! More help! more help!

(Oh! it’s a good lark just here, sir, but tremendous hard work, for there’s so many figures to work—and all struggling, too,—and you have to work them all at once. This is comic, this is.)

Beadle. More help! be quick! be quick!

Re-enter Jim Crow.

Jim Crow. Come de long! come de long! come de long! me nigger, and you beata me.

[Exaunts all, Punch still singing out, “I’ll not go.”

END OF FIRST ACT.

Change of Scene for Second Act.

Scene draws up, and discovers the exterior of a prison, with Punch peeping through the bars, and singing a merry song of the merry bells of England, all of the olden time. (That’s an olden song, you know; it’s old ancient, and it’s a moral,—a moral song, you know, to show that Punch is repenting, but pleased, and yet don’t care nothink at all about it, for he’s frolicsome, and on the height of his frolic and amusement to all the juveniles, old and young, rich and poor. We must put all classes together.)

Enter Hangman Jack Ketch, or Mr. Graball.

(That’s Jack Ketch’s name, you know; he takes all, when they gets in his clutches. We mustn’t blame him for he must do his duty, for the sheriffs is so close to him.)

The last scene as I had was Temple-bar Scene; it was a prison once, ye know; that’s the old ancient, ye know, but I never let the others see it, cos it shouldn’t become too public. But I think Newgate is better, in the new edition, though the prison is suspended, it being rather too terrific for the beholder. It was the old ancient style; the sentence is passed upon him, but by whom not known; he’s not tried by one person, cos nobody can’t.

Jack Ketch. Now, Mr. Punch, you are going to be executed by the British and Foreign laws of this and other countries, and you are to be hung up by the neck until you are dead—dead—dead.

Punch. What, am I to die three times?

Jack. No, no; you’re only to die once.

Punch. How is that? you said I was to be hung up by the neck till I was dead—dead—dead? You can’t die three times.

Jack. Oh, no; only once.

Punch. Why, you said dead—dead—dead.

Jack. Yes; and when you are dead—dead—dead—you will be quite dead.

Punch. Oh! I never knowed that before.

Jack. Now, prepare yourself for execution.

Punch. What for?

Jack. For killing your wife, throwing your poor dear little innocent baby out of the window, and striking the Beadle unmercifully over the head with a mop-stick. Come on.

Jack. Now, my boy, here is the corfin, here is the gibbet, and here is the pall.

Punch. There’s the corfee-shop, there’s giblets, and there’s St. Paul’s.

Jack. Get out, young foolish! Now then, place your head in here.

Punch. What, up here?

Jack. No; a little lower down.

(There’s quick business in this, you know; this is comic—a little comic business, this is.)

Punch. (Dodging the noose.) What, here?

Jack. No, no; in there (showing the noose again).

Punch. This way?

Jack. No, a little more this way; in there.

Jack. Get up, you’re not dead.

Punch. Oh, yes I am.

Jack. But I say, no.

Punch. Please, sir, (bowing to the hangman)—(Here he’s an hypocrite; he wants to exempt himself,)—do show me the way, for I never was hung before, and I don’t know the way. Please, sir, to show me the way, and I’ll feel extremely obliged to you, and return you my most sincere thanks.

(Now, that’s well worded, sir; it’s well put together; that’s my beauty, that is; I am obliged to study my language, and not have any thing vulgar whatsoever. All in simplicity, so that the young children may not be taught anything wrong. There arn’t nothing to be learnt from it, because of its simplicity.)

Jack. Very well; as you’re so kind and condescending, I will certainly oblige you by showing you the way. Here, my boy! now, place your head in here, like this (hangman putting his head in noose); this is the right and the proper way; now, you see the rope is placed under my chin; I’ll take my head out, and I will place yours in (that’s a rhyme) and when your head is in the rope, you must turn round to the ladies and gentlemen, and say—Good-by; fare you well.

(Very slowly then—a stop between each of the words; for that’s not driving the people out of the world in quick haste without giving ’em time for repentance. That’s another moral, yer see. Oh, I like all the morals to it.)

Punch (quickly pulling the rope). Good-by; fare you well. (Hangs the hangman.) (What a hypocrite he is again, yer see, for directly he’s done it he says: ‘Now, I’m free again for frolic and fun;’ calls Joey, the clown, his old friend, because they’re both full of tricks and antics: ‘Joey, here’s a man hung hisself;’—that’s his hypocrisy again, yer see, for he tries to get exempt after he’s done it hisself.)

Enter Clown, in quick haste, bobbing up against the gallows.

Clown. Dear me, I’ve run against a milk-post! Why, dear Mr. Punch, you’ve hung a man! do take him down! How came you to do it?

Punch. He got wet through, and I hung him up to dry.

Clown. Dear me! why you’ve hung him up till he’s dried quite dead!

Punch. Poor fellow! then he won’t catch cold with the wet. Let’s put him in this snuff-box. [Pointing to coffin.

Punch. Mind what you are about! (for Punch is game, yer know, right through to the back-bone.)

Clown. Make haste, Punch, here’s somebody a-coming! (They hustle his legs and feet in; but they can’t get his head in, the undertaker not having made the coffin large enough.)

Punch. We’d better double him up, place the pall on, and take the man to the brave,—not the grave, but the brave: cos he’s been a brave man in his time may be.—Sings the song of ‘Bobbing around,’ while with the coffin he bobs Joey on the head, and exaunt.

Re-enter Punch.

Punch. That was a jolly lark, wasn’t it? Sings,—

All this wit must have been born in me, or nearly so; but I got a good lot of it from Porsini and Pike—and gleanings, you know. [Punch disappears and re-enters with bell.

Punch. This is my pianner-sixty: it plays fifty tunes all at one time.

(There’s a little window, and a little door to this side-scene.) If they was to play it all through, as you’re a writing, it ’ud open Drury-lane Theatre.

Punch. Go away? Yes, play away! Oh, you means, O’er the hills and far away. (He misunderstands him, wilfully, the hypocrite.) [Punch keeps on ringing his bell violently. Publican, in a violent passion, opens the door, and pushes him away, saying, “Be off with you!”]

Punch. I will not. (Hits him over the head with the bell.) You’re no judge of music. (Plays away.)

Publican exaunts to fetch cudgel to pay him out. Punch no sooner sees cudgel than he exaunts, taking his musical instrument with him. It’s far superior to anything of the kind you did ever see, except ‘seldom.’ You know it’s silver, and that’s what we says ‘seldom;’ silver, you know, is ‘seldom,’ because it’s seldom you sees it.

Publican comes out of his house with his cudgel to catch old Punch on the grand hop. Must have a little comic.

Punch returns again with his bell, while publican is hiding secretly for to catch him. Publican pretends, as he stands in a corner, to be fast asleep, but keeps his eyes wide awake all the while, and says, ‘If he comes up here, I’ll be one upon his tibby.’

Punch comes out from behind the opposite side, and rings his bell violently. Publican makes a blow at him with his cudgel, and misses, saying, “How dare you intrude upon my premises with that nasty, noisy bell?”

Punch, while publican is watching at this side-scene, appears over at the other, with a hartful dodge, and again rings his bell loudly, and again the publican misses him; and while publican is watching at this side-scene, Punch re-enters, and draws up to him very slowly, and restes his pianner-sixty on the board, while he slowly advances to him, and gives him a whack on the head with his fist. Punch then disappears, leaving his bell behind, and the landlord in pursession of his music.

Landlord (collaring the bell). Smuggings! pursession is nine points of the law! So this bell is mine, (guarding over it with a stick). Smuggings! this is mine, and when he comes up to take this bell away, I shall have him. Smuggings! it’s mine.

Punch re-enters very slowly behind the publican as he is watching the bell, and snatching up the bell, cries out, ‘That’s mine,’ and exaunts with it.

Publican. Dear me! never mind; I look after him; I shall catch him some day or other. (Hits his nose up against the post as he is going away.) (That’s comic.) Oh, my nose! never mind, I’ll have him again some time. [Excite Publican.

Clown re-enters with Punch.

Clown. Oh, Punch, how are you?

Punch. I’m very glad to see you. Oh, Joey, my friend, how do you do?

Clown. Here, Punch, are you a mind for a lark? (Peeping in at the cottage window, represented as a public-house.) Are you hungry, Punch? would you like something to eat?

Punch. Yes.

Clown. What would you like?

Punch. Not peculiar.

(Not particular, he means, you know; that’s a slip word.)

Clown. I’ll go up into the landlord, and see if he’s got anything to eat. (Exaunt into cottage, and poking his head of the window.) Here, Punch; here’s the landlord fast asleep in the kitchen cellar; here’s a lot of sausages hanging up here.

(Joey’s a-thieving; don’t you see, he’s a robbing the landlord now?)

Would you like some for supper, eh, Punch?

Punch. Yes, to be sure.

Clown. Don’t make a noise; you’ll wake the landlord.

Punch (whispering as loud as he can bawl through the window). Hand ’em out here. (Punch pulls them out of the window.)

Clown. What are we to fry them in? I’ll go and see if I can find a fryingpan.

Punch. Yes, to be sure.

(Punch is up to everything. He’s a helping him to rob the publican. One’s as much in the mud as the other is in the mire.)

Clown. (Thrusting red-hot poker out of window.) Here, lay hold—Here’s a lark—Make haste—Here’s the landlord a coming. (Rubs Punch with it over the nose.)

Punch. Oh my nose!—that is a hot ’un. [Takes poker.

Clown. (Re-enters, and calls in at window.) Landlord, here’s a fellow stole your sausages and fryingpan. (Wakes up Landlord and exaunts.)

Landlord. (Appears at window.) Here’s somebody been in my house and axually stole my sausages, fryingpan, and red-hot poker!

(Clown exaunts when he has blamed it all to Punch. Joey stole ’em, and Punch took ’em, and the receiver is always worse than the thief, for if they was never no receivers there wouldn’t never be no thieves.)

Landlord. Seizing the sausages in Punch’s hand, says, How did you get these here?

Punch. Joey stole ’em, and I took ’em.

Landlord. Then you’re both jolly thieves, and I must have my property. A scuffle ensues. Punch hollars out, Joey! Joey! Here’s the landlord a stealing the sausages!

(So you see Punch wants to make the landlord a thief so as to exempt himself. He’s a hypocrite there again, you see again—all through the piece he’s the master-piece. Oh a most clever man is Punch, and such an hypocrite.)

(Punch, seizing the fryingpan, which has been on the play-board, knocks it on the publican’s head; when, there being a false bottom to it, the head goes through it, and the sausages gets about the Publican’s neck, and Punch pulls at the pan and the sausages with veheminence, till the landlord is exhausted, and exaunts with his own property back again; so there is no harm done, only merely for the lark to return to those people what belongs to ’em—What you take away from a person always give to them again.)

Re-enter Clown.

Clown. Well, Mr. Punch, I shall wish you a pleasant good morning.

Punch. [Hits him with his cudgel.] Good morning to you, Joey.

Exaunt Joey.

Punch sits down by the side of the poker, and Scaramouch appears without a head.

Punch looks, and beholds, and he’s frightened, and exaunts with the poker.

Scaramouch does a comic dance, with his long neck shooting up and down with the actions of his body, after which he exaunts.

Punch re-enters again with the poker, and places it beside of him, and takes his cudgel in his hand for protection, while he is singing the National Anthem of “God save the Queen and all the Royal Family.”

Satan then appears as a dream (and it is all a dream after all), and dressed up as the Roossian Bear (leave Politics alone as much as you can, for Punch belongs to nobody).

Punch has a dreadful struggle with Satan, who seizes the red-hot poker and wants to take Punch away, for all his past misdeeds, and frolic and fun, to the bottomless pit.

By struggling with Satan, Punch overpowers him, and he drops the poker, and Punch kills him with his cudgel, and shouts “Bravo! Hooray! Satan is dead,” he cries (we must have a good conclusion): “we can now all do as we like!”—(That’s the moral, you see.) “Good-by, Ladies and Gentlemen: this is the whole of the original performance of Mr. Punch: and I remain still your most obedient and most humble servant to command. Good-by, good-by, good-by. God bless you all. I return you my most sincere thanks for your patronage and support, and I hope you’ll come out handsome with your gold and silver.”

There is one Punch in France, but far different to the English Punch; they exhibiting their figures in a different way by performing them with sticks, the same as Scaramouch is done. They has a performing Punch sitivated at the Boulevards, in Paris, where he has a certain piece of ground allotted for him, with seats attached, being his own freehold property; the passers-by, if they wish to see the performance, they take their seat with the juveniles, sits down, and he performs to them for what they think proper to give him. I never was over in France, but I’ve heard talk of him a deal from foreigners who has given us inflammation about it, vich they was so kind to do. They shows the difference between English and French you know.

Every one who has resided for any time in London must have noticed in the streets a large roomy show upon wheels, about four times as capacious as those used for the performance of Punch and Judy.

The proprietor of one of these perambulating exhibitions was a person of some 56 years of age, with a sprightly half-military manner; but he is seldom seen by the public, on account of his habit of passing the greater part of the day concealed within his theatre, for the purpose of managing the figures. When he paid me a visit, his peculiar erect bearing struck me as he entered. He walked without bending his knees, stamped with his heels, and often rubbed his hands together as if washing them with an invisible soap. He wore his hair with the curls arranged in a Brutus, à la George the Fourth, and his chin was forced up into the air by a high black stock, as though he wished to increase his stature. He wore a frock coat buttoned at waist, and open on his expanded chest, so as to show off the entire length of his shirt-front.

I could not help asking him, if he had ever served in the army. He, however, objected to gratify my curiosity on that point, though it was impossible from his reply not to infer that he had been in her majesty’s service.

There was a mystery about his origin and parentage, which he desired should remain undisturbed. His relations were all of them so respectable, he said, that he did not wish to disgrace them by any revelations he might make; thus implying that he considered his present occupation a downfall in life.

“I followed it as my propensity,” he proceeded, “and though I have run through three fortunes, I follow it still. I never knew the value of money, and when I have it in my pocket I cannot keep it there. I have spent forty-five pounds in three days.”

He seemed to be not a little fond of exhibiting his dolls, and considered himself to be the only person living who knew anything of the art. He said orders were sent to him from all parts of the country to make the figures, and indeed some of them were so intricate, that he alone had the secret of their construction.

He hardly seemed to like the Marionettes, and evidently looked upon them as an interference with “the real original character” of the exhibition. The only explanation he could give of the difference between the Marionettes and the Fantoccini was, that the one had a French title, and referred to dolls in modern costume, whilst the other was an Italian word, and applied to dolls in fancy dresses.

He gave me the following interesting statement:—

“The Fantoccini,” he said, “is the proper title of the exhibition of dancing dolls, though it has lately been changed to that of the ‘Marionettes,’ owing to the exhibition under that name at the Adelaide Gallery.

“That exhibition at the Adelaide Gallery was very good in its way, but it was nothing to be compared to the exhibition that was once given at the Argyll Rooms in Regent-street, (that’s the old place that was burned down). It was called ‘Le petit Théâtre Matthieu,’ and in my opinion it was the best one that ever come into London, because they was well managed. They did little pieces—heavy and light. They did Shakespeare’s tragedies and farces, and singing as well; indeed, it was the real stage, only with dolls for actors and parties to speak for ’em and work their arms and legs behind the scenes. I’ve known one of these parties take three parts—look at that for clever work—first he did an old man, then an old woman, and afterwards the young man. I assisted at that performance, and I should say it was full twenty years ago, to the best of my recollection. After the Marionettes removed to the Western Institution, Leicester-square, I assisted at them also. It was a passable exhibition, but nothing out of the way. The figures were only modelled, not carved, as they ought to be. I was only engaged to exhibit one figure, a sailor of my own making. It was a capital one, and stood as high as a table. They wanted it for the piece called the ‘Manager in Distress,’ where one of the performers is a sailor. Mine would dance a hornpipe, and whip its hat off in a minute; when I had finished performing it, I took good care to whip it into a bag, so that they should not see how I arranged the strings, for they was very backwards in their knowledge. When we worked the figures it was very difficult, because you had to be up so high—like on the top of the ceiling, and to keep looking down all the time to manage the strings. There was a platform arranged, with a place to rest against.

“The first to introduce the Fantoccini into London—that is, into London streets, mind you, going about—was Gray, a Scotchman. He was a very clever fellow,—very good, and there was nothing but what was good that belonged to it—scenery, dresses, theatre and all. He had a frame then, no longer than the Punch frame now, only he had a labouring man to carry it for him, and he took with him a box no larger than a haberdasher’s box, which contained the figures, for they were not more than nine inches high. Now my figures are two feet high, though they don’t look it; but my theatre is ten feet high by six foot wide, and the opening is four feet high. This Gray was engaged at all the theatres, to exhibit his figures at the masquerades. Nothing went down but Mr. Gray, and he put poor Punch up altogether. When he performed at the theatres, he used to do it as a wind-up to the entertainment, after the dancing was over, and they would clear the stage on purpose for him, and then let down a scene with an opening in it, the size of his theatre. On these occasions his figures were longer, about two feet, and very perfect. There was juggling, and slack and tight rope-dancing, and Punches, and everything, and the performance was never less than one hour, and then it was done as quick as lightning, every morning, and no feat longer than two or three minutes. It didn’t do to have silly persons there.

“This Gray performed at Vauxhall when Bish, the lottery-man in Cornhill, had it, and he went down wonderful. He also performed before George the Fourth. I’ve heard say that he got ten pounds a-week when he performed at Vauxhall, for they snatched him out of the streets, and wouldn’t let him play there. It’s impossible to say what he made in the streets, for he was a Scotchman and uncommon close. If he took a hatfull, he’d say, ‘I’ve only got a few;’ but he did so well he could sport his diamond rings on his fingers,—first rate—splendid.

“Gray was the first to exhibit gratis in the streets of London, but he was not the first to work fantoccini figures. They had always been exhibited at theatres before that. Old Porsini knowed nothing about them—it was out of his business all together, for he was Punch and nothing more. Gray killed Porsini and his Punch; regular shut him up. A man of the name of Flocton from Birmingham was, to the best of my knowledge, the first that ever had a fantoccini exhibition in England; but he was only for theatres.

“At this time I had been playing in the orchestra with some travelling comedians, and Mr. Seawood, the master, used among other things to exhibit the dancing figures. He had a proscenium fitted up so that he could open a twenty-foot theatre, almost large enough for living persons. He had the splendidest figures ever introduced into this country. He was an artist as well, splendid scene and transparent painter; indeed, he’s worked for some of the first noblemen in Cheltenham, doing up their drawing-rooms. His figures worked their eyes and mouths by mechanism; according to what they had to say, they looked and moved their eyes and mouths according; and females, if they was singing, heaved their bosoms like Christians, the same as life. He had a Turk who did the tight-rope without anybody being seen. He always performed different pieces, and had a regular wardrobe with him—beautiful dresses—and he’d dress ’em up to their parts, and then paint their faces up with distemper, which dries in an hour. Somebody came and told me that Gray was in London, performing in the streets, and that’s what brought me out. I had helped Mr. Seawood to manage the figures, and I knew something about them. They told me Gray had a frame, and I said, ‘Well, it’s a bit of genius, and is a fortune.’ The only figures they told me he had—and it was true—was a sailor, and a Turk, and a clown, and what we calls a Polander, that’s a man that tosses the pole. I left Seawood directly, and I went to my father and got some money, and began instantly making my frame and figures. Mine was about sixteen inches high, and I had five of ’em. I began very strong. My fifth figure was a juggler. I was the second that ever came out in the streets of London. It was at the time that George the Fourth went to Scotland, and Gray went after him to try his luck, following the royal family. As the king went out of London I came in. I first of all put up at Peckham, just to lay to a bit and look about me. I’ll tell you the reason. I had no one to play, and I couldn’t manage the figures and do the music as well, consequently I had to seek after some one to do the pandean pipes. I didn’t like to make my first appearance in London without music. At last I met a party that used to play the pipes at Vauxhall. I met him one day, and he says, ‘What are you up to now?’ so I told him I had the fantoccini figures. He was a beautiful pipe player, and I’ve never heard any one like him before or since. He wouldn’t believe I had the figures, they was such a novelty. I told him where I was staying, and he and his partner came over to see me, and I performed the figures, and then we went on shares. He had worked for Gray, and he knew all his houses where he used to perform, and I knew nothing about these things. When Gray came back he found me performing before one of his houses in Harley-street, where he always had five shillings.

“They was a tremendous success—wonderful. If we had a call at a house our general price was two-and-sixpence, and the performance was, for a good one, twenty minutes. Then there was the crowd for the collection, but they was principally halfpence, and we didn’t care about them much, though we have taken four shillings. We never pitched only to houses, only stopping when we had an order, and we hadn’t occasion to walk far, for as soon as the tune was heard, up would come the servants to tell us to come. I’ve had three at me at once. I’ve known myself to be in Devonshire-place, when I was performing there, to be there for three hours and upwards, going from house to house. I could tell you how much we took a-day. It was, after taking expenses, from four to five pounds a-day. Besides, there was a labourer to whom we paid a guinea a-week to carry a frame, and he had his keep into the bargain. Where Punch took a shilling we’ve taken a pound.

“I recollect going down with the show to Brighton, and they actually announced our arrival in the papers, saying, that among other public amusements they had the Fantoccini figures from London. That’s a fact. That was in the paper. We did well in Brighton. We have, I can assure you, taken eighteen shillings and sixpence in half an hour, corner-pitching, as we call it; that is, at the corner of a street where there is a lot of people passing. We had such success, that the magistrates sent the head-constable round with us, to clear away the mob. If we performed before any gentleman’s place, there was this constable to keep the place clear. A nasty busy fellow he was, too. All the time we was at Brighton we made twenty pounds a-week clear, for we then took only shillings and sixpences, and there was no fourpenny pieces or threepenny bits in them times. We had gentlemen come up many a time and offer to buy the whole concern, clear. What an idea, wasn’t it? But we didn’t want to sell it, they couldn’t have given us our price.

“The crowd was always a great annoyance to us. They’d follow us for miles, and the moment we pitched up they’d come and gather about, and almost choke us. What was their ha’pence to us when we was taking our half-crowns? Actually, in London, we walked three and four miles to get rid of the mob; but, bless you! we couldn’t get rid of them, for they was like flies after honey.

“We used to do a great business with evening parties. At Christmas we have had to go three and four times in the same evening to different parties. We never had less than a guinea, and I have had as much as five pounds, but the usual price was two pounds ten shillings, and all refreshments found you. I had the honour of performing before the Queen when she was Princess Victoria. It was at Gloucester-house, Park-lane, and we was engaged by the royal household. A nice berth I had of it, for it was in May, and they put us on the landing of the drawing-room, where the folding-doors opened, and there was some place close by where hot air was admitted to warm the apartments; and what with the heat of the weather and this ’ere ventilation, with the heat coming up the grating-places, and my anxiety performing before a princess, I was near baked, and the perspiration quite run off me; for I was packed up above, standing up and hidden, to manage the figures. There was the maids of honour coming down the stairs like so many nuns, dressed all in white, and the princess was standing on a sofa, with the Duke of Kent behind her. She was apparently very much amused, like others who had seen them. I can’t recollect what we was paid, but it was very handsome and so forth.

“I’ve also performed before the Baroness Rothschild’s, next the Duke of Wellington’s, and likewise the Baron himself, in Grosvenor-place, and Sir Watkyn W. Wynne, and half the nobility in England. We’ve been in the very first of drawing-rooms.

“I shall never forget being at Sir Watkyn Wynne’s, for we was very handsomely treated, and had the best of everything. It was in St. James’s-square, and the best of mansions. It was a juvenile-party night, and there was a juggler, and a Punch and Judy, and our Fantoccini. One of the footmen comes up, and says he, ‘Would any of you men like a jelly?’ I told him I didn’t care for none, but the Punch-and-Judy man says—‘My missus is very partial to them.’ So the footman asks—‘How will you carry it home?’ I suggested he should put it in his hat, and the foolish fellow, half silly with horns of ale, actually did, and wrapped it up in his pocket-handkerchief. There was a large tumbler full. By and by he cries—‘Lord, how I sweat!’ and there was the stuff running down his hair like so much size. We did laugh, I can assure you.

“Fantoccini has fallen off now. It’s quite different to what it was. I don’t think the people’s tired of it, but it ain’t such a novelty. I could stop up a whole street if I liked, so that nothing could get along, and that shows the people ain’t tired of it. I think it’s the people that gave the half-crowns are tired of it, but those with the ha’pence are as fond of it as ever. As times go, the performance is worth two pounds a-week to me; and if it wasn’t, I couldn’t afford to stop with it, for I’m very clever on the violin, and I could earn more than thirty shillings a-week playing in bands. We still attend evening parties, only it isn’t to princesses, but gentry. We depend more upon evening parties. It isn’t street work, only if we didn’t go round they’d think I was dead. We go to more than thirty parties a-year. We always play according to price, whether it’s fifteen shillings, or ten shillings, or a guinea. We don’t get many five-guinea orders now. The last one was six months ago, to go twenty-eight miles into Kent, to a gentleman’s house. When we go to parties, we take with us a handsome, portable, fold-up frame. The front is beautiful, and by a first-rate artist. The gentleman who done it is at the head of the carriage department at a railway, and there’s the royal arms all in gold, and it stands above ten feet high, and has wings and all, so that the music and everything is invisible. It shuts up like a portfolio. The figures are first-rate ones, and every one dressed according to the country, whatever it may be, she is supposed to represent. They are in the best of material, with satin and lace, and all that’s good.

“When we perform in the streets, we generally go through this programme. We begins with a female hornpipe dancer; then there is a set of quadrilles by some marionette figures, four females and no gentleman. If we did the men we should want assistance, for four is as much as I can hold at once. It would require two men, and the street won’t pay for it. After this we introduces a representation of Mr. Grimaldi the clown, who does tumbling and posturing, and a comic dance, and so forth, such as trying to catch a butterfly. Then comes the enchanted Turk. He comes on in the costume of a Turk, and he throws off his right and left arm, and then his legs, and they each change into different figures, the arms and legs into two boys and girls, a clergyman the head, and an old lady the body. That figure was my own invention, and I could if I like turn him into a dozen; indeed, I’ve got one at home, which turns into a parson in the pulpit, and a clerk under him, and a lot of little charity children, with a form to sit down upon. They are all carved figures, every one of them, and my own make. The next performance is the old lady, and her arms drop off and turn into two figures, and the body becomes a complete balloon and car in a minute, and not a flat thing, but round—and the figures get into the car and up they go. Then there’s the tight-rope dancer, and next the Indian juggler—Ramo Samee, a representation—who chucks the balls about under his feet and under his arms, and catches them on the back of his head, the same as Ramo Samee did. Then there’s the sailor’s hornpipe—Italian Scaramouch (he’s the old style). This one has a long neck, and it shoots up to the top of the theatre. This is the original trick, and a very good one. Then comes the Polander, who balances a pole and two chairs, and stands on his head and jumps over his pole; he dresses like a Spaniard, and in the old style. It takes a quarter of an hour to do that figure well, and make him do all his tricks. Then comes the Skeletons. They’re regular first class, of course. This one also was my invention, and I was the first to make them, and I’m the only one that can make them. They are made of a particular kind of wood. I’m a first-rate carver, and can make my three guineas any day for a skull; indeed, I’ve sold many to dentists to put in their window. It’s very difficult to carve this figure, and takes a deal of time. It takes full two months to make these skeletons. I’ve been offered ten pounds ten shillings for a pair, if I’d make ’em correct according to the human frame. Those I make for exhibiting in the streets, I charge two pounds each for. They’re good, and all the joints is correct, and you may put ’em into what attitudes you like, and they walk like a human being. These figures in my show come up through a trap-door, and perform attitudes, and shiver and lie down, and do imitations of the pictures. It’s a tragic sort of concern, and many ladies won’t have ’em at evening parties, because it frightens the children. Then there’s Judy Callaghan, and that ’livens up after the skeletons. Then six figures jump out of her pockets, and she knocks them about. It’s a sort of comic business. Then the next is a countryman who can’t get his donkey to go, and it kicks at him and throws him off, and all manner of comic antics, after Billy Button’s style. Then I do the skeleton that falls to pieces, and then becomes whole again. Then there’s another out-of-the-way comic figure that falls to pieces similar to the skeleton. He catches hold of his head and chucks it from one hand to the other. We call him the Nondescript. We wind up with a scene in Tom and Jerry. The curtain winds up, and there’s a watchman prowling the streets, and some of those larking gentlemen comes on and pitch into him. He looks round and he can’t see anybody. Presently another comes in and gives him another knock, and then there’s a scuffle, and off they go over the watch-box, and down comes the scene. That makes the juveniles laugh, and finishes up the whole performance merry like.

“I’ve forgot one figure now. I know’d there was another, and that’s the Scotchman who dances the Highland fling. He’s before the watchman. He’s in the regular national costume, everything correct, and everything, and the music plays according to the performance. It’s a beautiful figure when well handled, and the dresses cost something, I can tell you; all the joints are counter-sunk—them figures that shows above the knee. There’s no joints to be seen, all works hidden like, something like Madame Vestris in Don Juan. All my figures have got shoes and stockings on. They have, indeed. If it wasn’t my work, they’d cost a deal of money. One of them is more expensive than all those in Punch and Judy put together. Talk of Punch knocking the Fantoccini down! Mine’s all show; Punch is nothing, and cheap as dirt.

“I’ve also forgot the flower-girl that comes in and dances with a garland. That’s a very pretty figure in a fairy’s dress, in a nice white skirt with naked carved arms, nice modelled, and the legs just the same; and the trunks come above the knee, the same as them ballet girls. She shows all the opera attitudes.

“The performance, to go through the whole of it, takes an hour and a half; and then you mustn’t stand looking at it, but as soon as one thing goes off the music changes and another comes on. That ain’t one third, nor a quarter of what I can do.

“When I’m performing I’m standing behind, looking down upon the stage. All the figures is hanging round on hooks, with all their strings ready for use. It makes your arms ache to work them, and especially across the loins. All the strength you have you must do, and chuck it out too; for those four figures which I uses at evening parties, which dance the polka, weighs six pounds, and that’s to be kept dangling for twenty minutes together. They are two feet high, and their skirts take three quarters of a yard, and are covered with spangles, which gives ’em great weight.

“There are only two of us going about now with Fantoccini shows. Several have tried it, but they had to knock under very soon. They soon lost their money and time. In the first place, they must be musicians to make the figures keep time in the dances; and, again, they must be carvers, for it won’t pay to put the figures out to be done. I had ten pounds the other day only to carve six figures, and the wood only come to three shillings; that’ll give you some idea of what the carving costs.

“Formerly I used to make the round of the watering-places, but I’ve got quite enough to do in London now, and travelling’s very expensive, for the eating and drinking is so very expensive. Now, at Ramsgate I’ve had to pay half-a-guinea for a bed, and that to a man in my position is more than I like. I always pays the man who goes along with me to play the music, because I don’t go out every day, only when it suits me. He gets as good as his twenty-three shillings a-week, according to how business is, and that’s on an average as good as four shillings a-day. If I’m very lucky I makes it better for him, for a man can’t be expected to go and blow his life away into pandean pipes unless he’s well paid for it.”

Until within the last ten or twelve years, the exhibition of guys in the public thoroughfares every 5th of November, was a privilege enjoyed exclusively by boys of from 10 to 15 years of age, and the money arising therefrom was supposed to be invested at night in a small pyrotechnic display of squibs, crackers, and catherine-wheels.

At schools, and at many young gentlemen’s houses, for at least a week before the 5th arrived, the bonfires were prepared and guys built up.

At night one might see rockets ascending in the air from many of the suburbs of London, and the little back-gardens in such places as the Hampstead-road and Kennington, and, after dusk, suddenly illuminated with the blaze of the tar-barrel, and one might hear in the streets even banging of crackers mingled with the laughter and shouts of boys enjoying the sport.

In those days the street guys were of a very humble character, the grandest of them generally consisting of old clothes stuffed up with straw, and carried in state upon a kitchen-chair. The arrival of the guy before a window was announced by a juvenile chorus of “Please to remember the 5th of November.” So diminutive, too, were some of these guys, that I have even seen dolls carried about as the representatives of the late Mr. Fawkes. In fact, none of these effigies were hardly ever made of larger proportions than Tom Thumb, or than would admit of being carried through the garden-gates of any suburban villa.

Of late years, however, the character of Guy Fawkes-day has entirely changed. It seems now to partake rather of the nature of a London May-day. The figures have grown to be of gigantic stature, and whilst clowns, musicians, and dancers have got to accompany them in their travels through the streets, the traitor Fawkes seems to have been almost laid aside, and the festive occasion taken advantage of for the expression of any political feeling, the guy being made to represent any celebrity of the day who has for the moment offended against the opinions of the people. The kitchen-chair has been changed to the costermongers’ donkey-truck, or even vans drawn by pairs of horses. The bonfires and fireworks are seldom indulged in; the money given to the exhibitors being shared among the projectors at night, the same as if the day’s work had been occupied with acrobating or nigger singing.

GUY FAWKES.

The first guy of any celebrity that made its appearance in the London streets was about the year 1844, when an enormous figure was paraded about on horseback. This had a tall extinguisher-hat, with a broad red brim, and a pointed vandyked collar, that hung down over a smock frock, which was stuffed out with straw to the dimensions of a water-butt. The figure was attended by a body of some half-dozen costermongers, mounting many coloured cockades, and armed with formidable bludgeons. The novelty of the exhibition ensured its success, and the “coppers” poured in in such quantities that on the following year gigantic guys were to be found in every quarter of the metropolis.

But the gigantic movement did not attain its zenith till the “No Popery” cry was raised, upon the division of England into papal bishoprics. Then it was no longer Fawkes, but Cardinal Wiseman and the Pope of Rome who were paraded as guys through the London thoroughfares.

The figures were built up of enormous proportions, the red hat of the cardinal having a brim as large as a loo-table, and his scarlet cape being as long as a tent. Guy Fawkes seated upon a barrel marked “Gunpowder” usually accompanied His Holiness and the Cardinal, but his diminutive size showed that Guy now played but a secondary part in the exhibition, although the lantern and the matches were tied as usual to his radishy and gouty fingers. According to the newspapers, one of these shows was paraded on the Royal Exchange, the merchants approving of the exhibition to such an extent that sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns were showered in to the hats of the lucky costers who had made the speculation. So excited was the public mind, that at night, after business was over, processions were formed by tradespeople and respectable mechanics, who, with bands of music playing, and banners flying, on which were inscribed anti-papal mottoes and devices, marched through the streets with flaming torches, and after parading their monster Popes and Cardinals until about nine o’clock at night, eventually adjourned to some open space—like Peckham-rye or Blackheath—where the guy was burned amid the most boisterous applauses.

Cardinal Wiseman and the Pope reappeared for several years in succession, till at length the Russian war breaking out, the Guy-Fawkes constructors had a fresh model to work upon. The Emperor of Russia accordingly “came out” in the streets, in all forms and shapes; sometimes as the veritable Nicholas, in jack-boots and leather breeches, with his unmistakable moustache; and often as Old Nick, with a pair of horns and a lengthy appendage in the form of a tail, with an arrow-headed termination; and not unfrequently he was represented as a huge bear crouching beneath some rude symbol of the English and French alliance.

On the 5th of November (1856) the guys were more of a political than a religious character. The unfortunate Pope of Rome had in some instances been changed for Bomba, though the Czar, His Holiness, and his British representative the Cardinal, were not altogether neglected. The want of any political agitation was the cause why the guys were of so uninteresting a character.

I must not, however, forget to mention a singular innovation that was then made in the recognised fashion of guy building—one of the groups of figures exhibited being (strange to say) of a complimentary nature. It consisted of Miss Nightingale, standing between an English Grenadier and a French foot-soldier, while at her feet lay the guy between two barrels marked “Gunpowder,” and so equivocally attired that he might be taken for either the Emperor of Russia or the Pope of Rome.

At Billingsgate, a guy was promenaded round the market as early as five o’clock in the morning, by a party of charity-boys, who appeared by their looks to have been sitting up all night. It is well known to the boys in the neighbourhood of the great fish-market, that the guy which is first in the field reaps the richest harvest of halfpence from the salesmen; and indeed, till within the last three or four years, one fish-factor was in the habit of giving the bearers of the first effigy he saw a half-crown piece. Hence there were usually two or three different guy parties in attendance soon after four o’clock, awaiting his coming into the market.

For manufacturing a cheap guy, such as that seen at Billingsgate, a pair of old trousers and Wellington boots form the most expensive item. The shoulders of the guys are generally decorated with a paper cape, adorned with different coloured rosettes and gilt stars. A fourpenny mask makes the face, and a proper cocked hat, embellished in the same style as the cape, surrounds the rag head.

The general characteristics of all guys consists in a limpness and roundness of limb, which give the form a puddingy appearance. All the extremities have a kind of paralytic feebleness, so that the head leans on one side like that of a dead bird, and the feet have an unnatural propensity for placing themselves in every position but the right one; sometimes turning their toes in, as if their legs had been put on the wrong way, or keeping their toes turned out, as if they had been “struck so” while taking their first dancing-lesson. Their fingers radiate like a bunch of carrots, and the arms are as shapeless and bowed as the monster sausage in a cook-shop window. The face is always composed of a mask painted in the state of the most florid health, and singularly disagreeing with the frightful debility of the body. Through the holes for the eyes bits of rag and straw generally protrude, as though birds had built in the sockets. A pipe is mostly forced into the mouth, where it remains with the bowl downwards; and in the hands it is customary to tie a lantern and matches. Whilst the guy is carried along, you can hear the straw in his interior rustling and crackling, like moving a workhouse mattrass. As a general rule, it may be added, that guys have a helpless, drunken look.

When, however, the monster Guy Fawkeses came into fashion, considerably greater expense was gone to in “getting up” the figures. Then the feet were always fastened in their proper position, and although the arrangement of the hands was never perfectly mastered, yet the fingers were brought a little more closely together, and approached the digital dexterity of the dummies at the cheap clothes marts.

For carrying the guys about, chairs, wheelbarrows, trucks, carts, and vans are employed. Chairs and wheelbarrows are patronised by the juvenile population, but the other vehicles belong to the gigantic speculations.

On the Surrey side a guy was exhibited in 1856 whose straw body was encased in a coachman’s old great coat, covered with different colours, as various as the waistcoat patterns on a tailor’s show-book. He was wheeled about on a truck by three or four young men, whose hoarse voices, when shouting “Please to remember the Guy,” showed their regular occupation to be street-selling, for they had the same husky sound as the “Eight a-groat fresh herrens,” in the Saturday night street-markets.

In the neighbourhood of Walworth, men dressed up as guys were dragged about on trucks. One of them was seated upon a barrel marked “Gunpowder,” his face being painted green, and ornamented with an immense false nose of a bright scarlet colour. I could not understand what this guy was meant to represent, for he wore a sugarloaf hat with an ostrich feather in it, and had on a soldier’s red coat, decorated with paper rosettes as big as cabbages. His legs, too, were covered with his own corduroy trowsers, but adorned with paper streamers and bows. In front of him marched a couple of men carrying broomsticks, and musicians playing upon a tambourine and a penny tin whistle.

The most remarkable of the stuffed figures of 1856 was one dressed in a sheet, intended to represent the Rev. Mr. Spurgeon in a surplice! It was carried about on a wooden stage by boys, and took very well with the mob, for no sooner did the lads cry out,—

than a shout of laughter burst from the crowd, and the halfpence began to pour in. Without this alteration in the November rhyme, nobody would have been able to have traced the slightest resemblance between the guy and the reverend gentleman whose effigy it was stated to be.

Further, it should be added, that the guy exhibitors have of late introduced a new system, of composing special rhymes for the occasion, which are delivered after the well-known “Remember, remember.” Those with the figures of the Pope, for instance, sing,—

I heard a party of costermongers, who had the image of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias wabbling on their truck, sing in chorus this home-manufactured verse,—

With the larger guys little is usually said or done beyond exhibiting them. In the crowded thoroughfares, the proprietors mostly occupy themselves only with collecting the money, and never let the procession stop for a moment. On coming to the squares, however, a different course is pursued, for then they stop before every window where a head is visible and sing the usual “Remember, remember,” winding up with a vociferous hurrah! as they hold out their hats for the halfpence.

At the West-end, one of the largest guys of 1856 was drawn by a horse in a cart. This could not have been less than fourteen feet high. Its face, which was as big as a shield, was so flat and good-humoured in expression that I at once recognised it as a pantomime mask, or one used to hang outside some masquerade costumier’s shop door. The coat was of the Charles the Second’s cut, and composed of a lightish coloured paper, ornamented with a profusion of Dutch metal. There was a sash across the right shoulder, and the legs were almost as long as the funnel to a penny steamer, and ended in brown paper cavalier boots. As the costermongers led it along, it shook like a load of straw. If it had not been for the bull’s-eye lantern and lath matches, nobody would have recognised in the dandy figure the effigy of the wretched Fawkes.

By far the handsomest turn-out of the day, at this time, was a group of three figures, which promenaded Whitechapel and Bethnal-green. They stood erect in a van drawn by a blind horse, and accompanied by a “band” of one performer on the drum and pandean pipes. Four clowns in full costume made faces while they jumped about among the spectators, and collected donations. All the guys were about ten feet high. The centre one, intended for Fawkes himself, was attired in a flowing cloak of crimson glazed calico, and his black hat was a broad-brimmed sugarloaf, the pointed crown of which was like a model of Langham-place church steeple, and it had a profusion of black hair streaming about the face. The figures on either side of this were intended for Lords Suffolk and Monteagle, in the act of arresting the traitor, and accordingly appeared to be gently tapping Mr. Fawkes on either shoulder. The bodies of their lordships were encased in gold scale-armour, and their legs in silver ditto, whilst their heads were covered with three-cornered cocked hats, surmounted by white feathers. In the front of the van were two white banners, with the following inscriptions in letters of gold:—

And,—

At the back of the van flaunted two flags of all nations. In addition to the four clowns, there were several other attendants; one in particular had the appearance of half a man and half a beast, his body being clad in a green frock-coat, whilst his legs and feet were shaggy, and made to imitate a bear’s.

The most remarkable part of this exhibition was the expression upon the countenances of the figures. They were ordinary masks, and consequently greatly out of proportion for the height of the figures. There was a strong family resemblance between the traitor and his arrestors; neither did Fawkes’s countenance exhibit any look of rage, astonishment, or disappointment at finding his designs frustrated. Nor did their lordships appear to be angry, disgusted, or thunderstruck at the conspirator’s bold attempt.

In the neighbourhood of Bond-street the guys partook of a political character, as if to please the various Members of Parliament who might be strolling to their Clubs. In one barrow was the effigy of the Emperor of the French, holding in his hands, instead of the lantern and matches, a copy of the Times newspaper, torn in half. I was informed that another figure I saw was intended to represent the form of Bomba.

In the neighbourhood of Lambeth Palace the guys were of an ecclesiastical kind, and such as it was imagined would be likely to flatter the Archbishop of Canterbury into giving at least a half-crown. One of these was drawn by two donkeys, and accompanied by drums and pipes. It represented Cardinal Wiseman in the company of four members of “the Holy Inquisition.” The Cardinal was dressed in the usual scarlet costume, while the Inquisitors were robed in black with green veils over their faces. In front of the cart was a bottle, labelled “Holy Water,” which was continually turned round, so that the people might discover that on the other side was printed “Whisky.”

The practice of burning guys, and lighting bonfires, and letting off fireworks, is now generally discontinued, and particularly as regards the public exhibitions at Blackheath and Peckham Rye. The greatest display of fireworks, we are inclined to believe, took place in the public streets of the metropolis, for up to twelve o’clock at night, one might occasionally hear reports of penny cannons, and the jerky explosions of crackers.

“I’m in the crock’ry line, going about with a basket and changing jugs, and glass, and things, for clothes and that; but for the last eight years I have, every Fifth of November, gone out with a guy. It’s a good job for the time, for what little we lay out on the guy we don’t miss, and the money comes in all of a lump at the last. While it lasts there’s money to be made by it. I used always to take the guy about for two days; but this last year I took him about for three.

“I was nineteen year old when I first went out with a guy. It was seeing others about with ’em, and being out of work at the time, and having nothing to sell, I and another chap we knocked up one between us, and we found it go on pretty well, so we kept on at it. The first one I took out was a very first-rater, for we’d got it up as well as we could to draw people’s attention. I said, ‘It ain’t no good doing as the others do, we must have a tip-topper.’ It represented Guy Fawkes in black velvet. It was about nine feet high, and he was standing upright, with matches in one hand and lantern in the other. I show’d this one round Clerkenwell and Islington. It was the first big ’un as was ever brought out. There had been paper ones as big, but ne’er a one dressed up in the style mine was. I had a donkey and cart, and we placed it against some cross-rails and some bits of wood to keep him steady. He stood firm because he had two poles up his legs, and being lashed round the body holding him firm to the posts—like a rock. We done better the first time we went out than we do lately. The guy must have cost a sovereign. He had a trunk-hose and white legs, which we made out of a pair of white drawers, for fleshings and yellow boots, which I bought in Petticoat-lane. We took over 3l. with him, which was pretty fair, and just put us on again, for November is a bad time for most street trades, and getting a few shillings all at once makes it all right till Christmas.

“A pal of mine, of the name of Smith, was the first as ever brought out a big one. His wasn’t a regular dressed-up one, but only with a paper apron to hang down the front and bows, and such-like. He put it on a chair, and had four boys to carry it on their shoulders. He was the first, too, as introduced clowns to dance about. I see him do well, and that’s why I took mine in hand.

“The year they was chalking ‘No Popery’ all about the walls I had one, dressed up in a long black garment, with a red cross on his bosom. I’m sure I don’t know what it meant, but they told me it would be popular. I had only one figure, with nine bows, and that tidiwated all about him. As we went along everybody shouted out ‘No Popery!’ Everybody did. He had a large brimmed hat with a low crown in, and a wax mask. I always had wax ones. I’ve got one at home now I’ve had for five year. It cost two-and-sixpence. It’s a very good-looking face but rather sly, with a great horse-hair beard. Most of the boys make their’n devils, and as ugly as they can, but that wouldn’t do for Christians like as I represent mine to be.

“One year I had Nicholas and his adviser. That was the Emperor of Russia in big top-boots and white breeches, and a green coat on. I gave him a good bit of mustachios—a little extra. He had a Russian helmet hat on, with a pair of eagles on the top. It was one I bought. I bought it cheap, for I only gave a shilling for it. I was offered five or six for it afterwards, but I found it answer my purpose to keep. I had it dressed up this year. The other figure was the devil. I made him of green tinsel paper cut out like scale armour, and pasted on to his legs to make it stick tight. He had a devil’s mask on, and I made him a pair of horns out of his head. Over them was a banner. I was told what to do to make the banner, for I had the letters writ out first, and then I cut ’em out of tinsel paper and stuck them on to glazed calico. On this banner was these words:—

That took immensely, for the people said ‘That is wery well.’ It was the time the war was on. I dare say I took between 3l. and 4l. that time. There was three of us rowed in with it, so we got a few shillings a-piece.

“The best one I ever had was the trial of Guy Fawkes. There was four figures, and they was drawn about in a horse and cart. There was Guy Fawkes, and two soldiers had hold of him, and there was the king sitting in a chair in front. The king was in a scarlet velvet cloak, sitting in an old arm-chair, papered over to make it look decent. There was green and blue paper hanging over the arms to hide the ragged parts of it. The king’s cloak cost sevenpence a-yard, and there was seven of these yards. He had a gilt paper crown and a long black wig made out of some rope. His trunks was black and crimson, and he had blue stockings and red boots. I made him up out of my own head, and not from pictures. It was just as I thought would be the best way to get it up, out of my own head. I’ve seed the picture of Guy Fawkes, because I’ve got a book of it at home. I never was no scholar, not in the least. The soldiers had a breastplate of white steel paper, and baggy knee-breeches, and top boots. They had a big pipe each, with a top cut out of tin. Their helmets was the same as in the pictures, of steel paper, and a kind of a dish-cover shape, with a peak in front and behind. Guy was dressed the same kind as he was this year, with a black velvet dress and red cloak, and red boots turning over at top, with lace sewed on. I never made any of my figures frightful. I get ’em as near as I can to the life like.

“I reckon that show was the best as I ever had about. I done very well with it. They said it was a very good sight, and well got up. I dare say it cost me, with one thing and another, pretty nigh 4l. to get up. There was two of us to shove, me and my brother. I know I had a sovereign to myself when it was over, besides a little bit of merry-making.

“This year I had the apprehension of Guy Fawkes by Lord Suffolk and Monteagle. I’ve followed up the hist’ry as close as I can. Next year I shall have him being burnt, with a lot of faggits and things about him. This year the figures cost about 3l. getting up. Fawkes was dressed in his old costume of black velvet and red boots. I bought some black velvet breeches in Petticoat-lane, and I gave 1s. 9d. for the two pair. They was old theatrical breeches. Their lordships was dressed in gold scale-armour like, of cut-out paper pasted on, and their legs imitated steel. They had three-corner cock’d hats, with white feathers in. I always buy fierce-looking masks with frowns, but one of them this year was a smiling—Lord Monteagle, I think. I took the figures as near as I can form from a picture I saw of Guy Fawkes being apprehended. I placed them figures in a horse and cart, and piled them up on apple-chests to the level of the cart, so they showed all, their feet and all. I bind the chests with a piece of table-cover cloth. The first day we went out we took 2l. 7s., and the second we took 1l. 17s., and the last day we took 2l. 1s. We did so well the third day because we went into the country, about Tottenham and Edmonton. They never witnessed such a thing down them parts. The drummer what I had with me was a blind man, and well known down there. They call him Friday, because he goes there every Friday, so what they usually gave him we had. Our horse was blind, so we was obliged to have one to lead him in front and another to lead the blind drummer behind. We paid the drummer 16s. for the three days. We paid for two days 10s., and the third one most of it came in, and we all went shares. It was a pony more than a horse. I think we got about a 1l. a-piece clear, when we was done on the Friday night. It took me six weeks getting up in my leisure time. There was the Russian bear in front. He wore a monkey dress, the same as in the pantomimes, and that did just as well for a bear. I painted his face as near as I could get it, to make it look frightful.

“When I’m building up a guy we first gits some bags and things, and cut ’em out to the shape of the legs and things, and then sew it up. We sew the body and arms and all round together in one. We puts two poles down for the legs and then a cross-piece at the belly and another cross-piece at the shoulder, and that holds ’em firm. We fill the legs with sawdust, and stuff it down with our hands to make it tight. It takes two sacks of sawdust for three figures, but I generally have it give to me, for I know a young feller as works at the wood-chopping. We stand ’em up in the room against the wall, whilst we are dressing them. We have lots of chaps come to see us working at the guys. Some will sit there for many hours looking at us. We stuff the body with shavings and paper and any sort of rubbish. I sew whatever is wanted myself, and in fact my fingers is sore now with the thimble, for I don’t know how to use a thimble, and I feel awkward with it. I design everything and cut out all the clothes and the painting and all. They allow me 5s. for the building. This last group took me six weeks,—not constant, you know, but only lazy time of a night. I lost one or two days over it, that’s all.

“I think there was more Guy Fawkeses out this year than ever was out before. There was one had Guy Fawkes and Punch and a Clown in a cart, and another was Miss Nightingale and two soldiers. It was meant to be complimentary to that lady, but for myself I think it insulting to bring out a lady like that as a guy, when she’s done good to all.

“They always reckon me to be about the first hand in London at building a guy. I never see none like them, nor no one else I don’t think. It took us two quire of gold paper and one quire of silver paper to do the armour and the banner and other things. The gold paper is 6d. a-sheet, and the silver is 1d. a sheet. It wouldn’t look so noble if we didn’t use the gold paper.

“This year we had three clowns with us, and we paid them 3s. a-day each. I was dressed up as a clown, too. We had to dance about, and joke, and say what we thought would be funny to the people. I had a child in my arms made of a doll stuffed with shavings, and made to represent a little boy. It was just to make a laugh. Every one I went up to I told the doll to ask their uncle or their aunt for a copper. I had another move, too, of calling for ‘Bill Bowers’ in the crowd, and if I got into any row, or anything, I used to call to him to protect me. We had no time to say much, for we kept on moving, and it loses time to talk.

“We took the guy round Goswell-road and Pentonville the first day, and on the second we was round Bethnal-green way, among the weavers. We went that way for safety the second day, for the police won’t interrupt you there. The private houses give the most. They very seldom give more than a penny. I don’t suppose we got more than 3s. or 4s. in silver all the three days.

“Sometimes we have rough work with the Irish going about with guys. The ‘No Popery’ year there was several rows. I was up at Islington-gate, there, in the Lower-road, and there’s loads of Irish live up there, and a rough lot they are. They came out with sticks and bricks, and cut after us. We bolted with the guy. If our guy hadn’t been very firm, it would have been jolted to bits. We always nailed straps round the feet, and support it on rails at the waist, and lashed to the sides. We bolted from this Irish mob over Islington-green, and down John-street into Clerkenwell. My mate got a nick with a stone just on the head. It just give him a slight hurt, and drawed the blood from him. We jumped up in the donkey-cart and drove off.

“There was one guy was pulled out of the cart this year, down by Old Gravel lane, in the Ratcliff-highway. They pulled Miss Nightingale out of the cart and ran away with her, and regular destroyed the two soldiers that was on each side of her. Sometimes the cabmen lash at the guys with their whips. We never say anything to them, for fear we might get stopped by the police for making a row. You stand a chance of having a feather knocked off, or such-like, as is attached to them.

“There’s a lot of boys goes about on the 5th with sticks, and make a regular business of knocking guys to pieces. They’re called guy-smashers. They don’t come to us, we’re too strong for that, but they only manage the little ones, as they can take advantage of. They do this some of them to take the money the boys have collected. I have had regular prigs following my show, to pick the pockets of those looking on, but as sure as I see them I start them off by putting a policeman on to them.

“When we’re showing, I don’t take no trouble to invent new rhymes, but stick to the old poetry. There’s some do new songs. I usually sing out,—

“It used to be King, but we say Queen now, and though it don’t rhyme, it’s more correct.

“It’s very seldom that the police say anything to us, so long as we don’t stop too long in the gangway not to create any mob. They join in the fun and laugh like the rest. Wherever we go there is a great crowd from morning to night.

“We have dinner on Guy Fawkes’ days between one and two. We go to any place where it’s convenient for us to stop at, generally at some public-house. We go inside, and leave some of the lads to look after the guy outside. We always keep near the window, where we can look out into the street, and we keep ourselves ready to pop out in a minute if anybody should attack the guy. We generally go into some by-way, where there ain’t much traffic. We never was interrupted much whilst we was at dinner, only by boys chucking stones and flinging things at it; and they run off as soon as we come out.

“There’s one party that goes out with a guy that sells it afterwards. They stop in London for the first two days, and then they work their way into the country as far as Sheerness, and then they sells the guy to form part of the procession on Lord-mayor’s day. It’s the watermen and ferrymen mostly buy it, and they carry it about in a kind of merriment among themselves, and at night they burn it and let off fireworks. They don’t make no charge for coming to see it burnt, but it’s open to the air and free to the public.

“None of the good guys taken about on the 5th are burnt at night, unless some gentlemen buy them. I used to sell mine at one time to the Albert Saloon. Sometimes they’d give me 15s. for it, and sometimes less, according to what kind of a one I had. Three years, I think, I sold it to them. They used to burn it at first in the gardens at the back, but after they found the gardens fill very well without it, so they wouldn’t have any more.

“I always take the sawdust and shavings out of my guys, and save the clothes for another year. The clothes are left in my possession to be taken care of. I make a kind of private bonfire in our yard with the sawdust and shavings, and the neighbours come there and have a kind of a spree, and shove one another into the fire, and kick it about the yard, and one thing and another.

“When I am building the guy, I begin about six weeks before 5th of November comes, and then we subscribe a shilling or two each and buy such things as we wants. Then, when we wants more, I goes to my pals, who live close by, and we subscribe another shilling or sixpence each, according to how we gets on in the day. Nearly all those that take out guys are mostly street traders.

“The heaviest expense for any guy I’ve built was 4l. for one of four figures.”

“I always go out with a Guy Fawkes every year. I’m seventeen years old, and I’ve been out with a guy ever since I can remember, except last year; I didn’t then, because I was in Middlesex Hospital with an abscess, brought on by the rheumatic fever. I was in the hospital a month. My father was an undertaker; he’s been dead four months: mother carries on the trade. He didn’t like my going out with guys, but I always would. He didn’t like it at all, he used to say it was a disgrace. Mother didn’t much fancy my doing it this year. When I was a very little un, I was carried about for a guy. I couldn’t a been more than seven years old when I first begun. They put paper-hangings round my legs—they got it from Baldwin’s, in the Tottenham Court-road; sometimes they bought, and sometimes got it give ’em; but they give a rare lot for a penny or twopence. After that they put me on a apron made of the same sort of paper—showy, you know—then they put a lot of tinsel bows, and at the corners they cut a sort of tail like there is to farriers’ aprons, and it look stunnin’; then they put on my chest a tinsel heart and rosettes; they was green and red, because it shows off. All up my arms I had bows and things to make a show-off. Then I put on a black mask with a little red on the cheek, to make me look like a devil: it had horns, too. Always pick out a devil’s mask with horns: it looks fine, and frightens the people a’most. The boy that dressed me was a very clever chap, and made a guy to rights. Why, he made me a little guy about a foot high, to carry in my lap—it was piecings of quilting like, a sort of patch-work all sewn together,—and then he filled it with saw-dust, and made a head of shavings. He picked the shavings small, and then sewed ’em up in a little bag; and then he painted a face, and it looked wery well; and he made it a little tinsel bob-tail coat, and a tinsel cap with two feathers on the top. It was made to sit in a chair; and there was a piece of string tied to each of the legs and the arms, and a string come behind; and I used to pull it, and the legs and arms jumped up. I was put in a chair, and two old broom-handles was put through the rails, and then a boy got in front, and another behind, and carried me off round Holborn way in the streets and squares. Every now and then they put me down before a window; then one of ’em used to say the speech, and I used all the time to keep pulling the string of my little guy, and it amused the children at the winders. After they’d said the speech we all shouted hurrah! and then some of them went and knocked at the door and asked ‘Please to remember the guy;’ and the little children brought us ha’pence and pence; and sometimes the ladies and gentlemen chucked us some money out of the winder. At last they carried me into Russell-square. They put me down before a gentleman’s house and begun saying the speech: while they was saying it, up comes a lot o’ boys with sticks in their hands. One of our chaps knowed what they was after, and took the little guy out of my hand, and went on saying the speech. I kept all on sitting still. After a bit one of these ’ere boys says, ‘Oh, it’s a dead guy; let’s have a lark with it!’ and then one of ’em gives me a punch in the eye with his fist, and then snatched the mask off my face, and when he’d pulled it off he says, ‘Oh, Bill, it’s a live un!’ We was afraid we should get the worst of it, so we run away round the square. The biggest one of our lot carried the chair. After we’d run a little way they caught us again, and says, ‘Now then, give us all your money;’ with that, some ladies and gentlemen that see it all came up to ’em and says, ‘If you don’t go we’ll lock you up;’ and so they let us go away. And so we went to another place where they sold masks; and we bought another. Then they asked me to be guy again, but I wouldn’t, for I’d got a black-eye through it already. So they got another to finish out the day. When we got home at night we shared 2s. a-piece. There was five of us altogether; but I think they chisselled me. I know they got a deal more than that, for they’d had a good many sixpences and shillings. People usen’t to think much of a shilling that time a-day, because there wasn’t any but little guys about then; but I don’t know but what the people now encourage little guys most, because they say that the chaps with the big ones ought to go to work.

“Next year I was out with a stuffed guy. They wanted me to be guy again, because I wasn’t frightened easy, and I was lightish; but I told ’em ‘No, I’ve had enough of being guy; I don’t be guy any more: besides, I had such fine money for getting a whack in the eye!’ We got on pretty well that year; but it gets wus and wus every year. We got hardly anything this year; and next I don’t suppose we shall get anything at all. These chaps that go about pitchin’ into guys we call ‘guy smashers;’ but they don’t do it only for the lark of smashing the guys: they do it for the purpose of taking the boys’ money away, and sometimes the clothes. If one of ’em has a hole in his boots, and he sees a guy with a good pair on, he pretty soon pulls ’em of the guy and hooks it off with ’em.

“After I’d been out with guys for three or four years, I got big enough to go to work, and I used to go along with my brother and help him at a coal-shed, carrying out coals. I was there ten months, and then one night—a bitter cold night, it was freezing hard—we had a naphtha lamp to light in the shop; and as me and my brother was doing it, either a piece of the match dropped in or else he poured it over, I can’t say which, but all at once it exploded and blowed me across the road and knocked him in the shop all a-fire; and I was all a-fire, too—see how it’s burnt my face and the hand I held the lucifer in. A woman run out of the next shop with some wet sacks, and throw’d ’em upon me, but it flared up higher then: water don’t put it out, unless it’s a mass of water like a engine. Then a milkman run up and pulled off his cape and throwed it over me, and that put it out; then he set me up, and I run home, though I don’t know how I got there, and for two days after I didn’t know anybody. Another man ran into the shop and pulled out my brother, and we was both taken to the University Hospital. Two or three people touched me, and the skin came off on their hands, and at nine o’clock the next morning my brother died. When they took me to the hospital they had no bed for me, and so they sent me home again, and I was seven months before I got well. But I’ve never been to say well since, and I shall never be fit for hard work any more.

“The next year I went out with a guy again, and I got on pretty well; and so I’ve done every year since, except last. I’ve had several little places since I got burnt, but they haven’t lasted long.

“This year I made a stunning guy. First of all I got a pair of my own breeches—black uns—and stuffed ’em full of shavings. I tied the bottoms with a bit of string. Then I got a black coat—that belonged to another boy—and sewed it all round to the trousers; then we filled that with shavings, and give him a good corporation. Then we got a block, sich as the milliners have, and shoved that right in the neck of the coat, and then we shoved some more shavings all round, to make it stick in tight; and when that was done it looked just like a dead man. I know something about dead men, because my father was always in that line. Then we got some horsehair and some glue, and plastered the head all round with glue, and stuck the horse-hair on to imitate the hair of a man; then we put the mask on: it was a twopenny one—they’re a great deal cheaper than they used to be, you can get a very good one now for a penny—it had a great big nose, and it had two red horns, black eyebrows, and red cheeks. I like devils, they’re so ugly. I bought a good-looking un two or three years ago, and we didn’t get hardly anything, the people said, ‘Ah! it’s too good-looking; it don’t frighten us at all.’ Well, then, after we put on his mask we got two gloves, one was a woollen un, and the other a kid un, and stuffed them full of shavings, and tied ’em down to the chair. We didn’t have no lantern, ’cos it keeps on falling out of his hands. After that we put on an old pair of lace-up boots. We tied ’em on to the legs of the breeches. The feet mostly twistes round, but we stopped that; we shoved a stick up the leg of his breeches, and the other end into the boot, and tied it, and then it couldn’t twist round very easy. After that we put a paper hanging-cap on his head; it was silk-velvet kind of paper, and decorated all over with tinsel bows. His coat we pasted all over with blue and green tinsel bows and pictures. They was painted theatrical characters, what we buy at the shop a ha’penny a sheet plain, and penny a sheet coloured: we bought ’em plain, and coloured them ourselves. A-top of his hat we put a hornament. We got some red paper, and cut it into narrow strips, and curled it with the blade of the scissors, and stuck it on like a feather. We made him a fine apron of hanging-paper, and cut that in slips up to his knees, and curled it with the scissors, the same as his feather, and decorated it with stars, and bows, and things, made out of paper, all manner of colours, and pieces of tinsel. After we’d finished the guy we made ourselves cock’d hats, all alike, and then we tied him in a chair, and wrote on his breast, ‘Villanous Guy.’ Then we put two broomsticks under the chair and carried him out. There was four of us, and the two that wasn’t carrying, they had a large bough of a tree each, with a knob at the top to protect the guy. We started off at once, and got into the squares, and put him in front of the gentlemen’s houses, and said this speech:—

“After we’d finished our speech in one of the squares, and hollowed Hurrah! the beadle come out, and said he’d give us the stick about our backs, and the guy too, if we didn’t go away. So we went away, and got into Russell-square and Bedford-square; but there was such a lot of small guys out, that we did worse than ever we’d done before. When we was in Southampton-street, Holborn, I finished the speech with ‘Down with the Pope, and God save the Queen;’ so four shoe-black boys come up, and says, says they, ‘What do you say, Down with the Pope and God save the Queen for?’ And I says, ‘I didn’t mean no harm of it.’ With that they makes use of some bad language, and told me they’d smash my head and the guy’s too; and they was going to do it, when up comes a boy that I knew, and I says to him, ‘They’re going to knock me about;’ so he says, ‘No they won’t;’ so then the boys made their reply, and said they would. So I told ’em they was very fast about fighting, I’d fight one of them; so with that they all got ready to pitch upon me: but when they see this other boy stuck to me, they went off, and never struck a blow. When we got home I opened the money-box and shared the money; one had 5d., and two had 4½d. each, and I had 7d. because I said the speech. At night we pulled him all to pieces, and burnt his stuffing, and let off some squibs and crackers. I always used to spend the money I got guying on myself. I used to buy sometimes fowls, because I could sell the eggs. There is some boys that take out guys as do it for the sake of getting a bit of bread and butter, but not many as I knows of.

“It don’t cost much to make a guy. The clothes we never burns—they’re generally too good: they’re our own clothes, what we wears at other times; and when people burn a guy they always pull off any of the things that’s of use fust; but mostly the guy gets pulled all to pieces, and only the shavings gets burnt.”

A short, thick-set man, with small, puckered-up eyes, and dressed in an old brown velveteen shooting-jacket, gave me an account of some bygone exhibitions of the galantee show.

“My father was a soldier,” he said, “and was away in foreign parts, and I and a sister lived with my mother in St. Martin’s workhouse. I was fifty-five last New-year’s-day. My uncle, a bootmaker in St. Martin’s-lane, took my mother out of the workhouse, that she might do a little washing, and pick up a living for herself; and we children went to live with my grandfather, a tailor. After his death, and after many changes, we had a lodging in the Dials, and there ——, the sweep, coaxed me with pudding one day, and encouraged me so well, that I didn’t like to go back to my mother; and at last I was ’prenticed to him from Hatton-Garden on a month’s trial, and I liked chimley-sweeping for that month; but it was quite different when I was regularly indentured. I was cruelly-treated then, and poorly fed, and had to turn out barefooted between three and four many a morning in frost and snow. In first climbing the chimleys, a man stood beneath me, and pushed me up, telling me how to use my elbows and knees, and if I slipped, he was beneath me and ketched me, and shoved me up again. The skin came off my knees and elbows; here’s the marks now, you see. I suffered a great deal, as well as Dan Duff, a fellow-sweep, a boy that died. I’ve been to Mrs. Montague’s dinner in the Square on the 1st of May, when I was a boy-sweep. It was a dinner in honour of her son having been stolen away by a sweep.” (The man’s own words.) “I suppose there were more than three hundred of us sweeps there, in a large green, at the back of her house. I run away from my master once, but was carried back, and was rather better used. My master then got me knee and ankle-pads, and bathed my limbs in salt and water, and I managed to drag on seven sorrowful years with him. I was glad to be my own man at last, and I cut the sweep-trade, bought pandean pipes, and started with an organ-man, as his mate. I saved money with the organ-man and then bought a drum. He gave me five shillings a-week, and my wittles and drink, washing and lodging; but there wasn’t so much music afloat then. I left the music-man and went out with ‘Michael,’ the Italy bear. Michael was the man’s name that brought over the bear from somewhere abroad. He was a Italy man; and he used to beat the bear, and manage her; they called her Jenny; but Michael was not to say roughish to her, unless she was obstropelous. If she were, he showed her the large mop-stick, and beat her with it—hard sometimes—specially when she wouldn’t let the monkey get a top on her head; for that was a part of the performance. The monkey was dressed the same as a soldier, but the bear had no dress but her muzzle and chain. The monkey (a clever fellow he was, and could jump over sticks like a Christian) was called Billy. He jumped up and down the bear, too, and on his master’s shoulders, where he set as Michael walked up and down the streets. The bear had been taught to roll and tumble. She rolled right over her head, all round a stick, and then she danced round about it. She did it at the word of command. Michael said to her, ‘Round and round again.’ We fed her on bread, a quartern-loaf every night after her work in half-a-pail of water, the same every morning; never any meat—nothing but bread, boiled ’tatoes, or raw carrots: meat would have made her savage. The monkey was fed upon nuts, apples, gingerbread, or anything. Besides them we had two dancing-dogs. The bear didn’t like them, and they were kept on one side in performing. The dogs jumped through hoops, and danced on their hind legs; they’re easyish enough trained. Sometimes the butchers set bull-dogs, two or three at a time, at Jenny; and Michael and me had to beat them off as well as the two other men that we had with us. Those two men collected the money, and I played the pipes and drum, and Michael minded the bear and the dogs and monkey. In London we did very well. The West-end was the best. Whitechapel was crowded for us, but only with ha’pence. I don’t know what Michael made, but I had seven shillings a-week, with my wittles and lodging. Michael done well. We generally had twenty to thirty shillings every night in ha’pence, and used to give twenty-one shillings of it for a one-pound note; for they was in then. When we’ve travelled in the country, we’ve sometimes had trouble to get lodgings for the bear. We’ve had to sleep in outhouses with her, and have sometimes frightened people that didn’t know as we was there, but nothing serious. Bears is well-behaved enough if they ain’t aggravated. Perhaps no one but me is left in England now what properly understands a dancing-bear.

“Jenny wasn’t ever baited, but offers was made for it by sporting characters.

“The country was better than London, when the weather allowed; but in Gloucester, Cheltenham, and a good many places, we weren’t let in the high streets.

“The gentlefolk in the balconies, both in town and country, where they had a good sight, were our best friends.

“It’s more than thirty years ago—yes, a good bit more now; at Chester races, one year, we were all taken, and put into prison: bear, and dogs, and musicianer, and all—every one—because we played a day after the races; that was Saturday.

“We were all in quod until Monday morning. I don’t know how the authorities fed the bear. We were each in a separate cell, and I had bread and cheese, and gruel.

“On Monday morning we were discharged, and the bear was shot by the magistrate’s orders. They wanted to hang poor Jenny at first, but she was shot, and sold to the hairdressers.

“I couldn’t stay to see her shot, and had to go into an alehouse on the road. I don’t know what her carcase sold for. It wasn’t very fat.

“Michael and me then parted at Chester, and he went home rich to Italy, taking his monkey and dogs with him, I believe.

“He lived very careful, chiefly on rice and cabbage, and a very little meat with it, which he called ‘manesta.’ He was a very old man. I had ‘manesta’ sometimes, but I didn’t like it much. I drummed and piped my way from Chester to London, and there took up with another foreigner, named Green, in the clock-work-figure line.

“The figures were a Turk called Bluebeard, a sailor, a lady called Lady Catarina, and Neptune’s car, which we called Nelson’s car as well; but it was Neptune’s car by rights.

“These figures danced on a table, when taken out of a box. Each had its own dance when wound up.

“First came my Lady Catarina. She, and the others of them, were full two feet high. She had a cork body, and a very handsome silk dress, or muslin, according to the fashion, or the season. Black in Lent, according to what the nobility wore.

“Lady Catarina, when wound up, danced a reel for seven minutes, the sailor a hornpipe, and Bluebeard shook his head, rolled his eyes, and moved his sword, just as natural as life. Neptune’s car went either straight or round the table, as it was set.

“We often showed our performances in the houses of the nobility, and would get ten or twelve shillings at a good house, where there were children.

“I had a third share, and in town and country we cleared fifty shillings a week, at least, every week, among the three of us, after all our keep and expenses were paid.

“At Doncaster races we have taken three pounds in a-day, and four pounds at Lincoln races.

“Country, in summer, is better than town. There’s now no such exhibition, barring the one I have; but that’s pledged. It cost twenty pounds at Mr. ——’s for the four figures without dress. I saved money, which went in an illness of rheumatic gout. There’s no bears at all allowed now. Times are changed, and all for the worser. I stuck to the clock-work concern sixteen years, and knows all parts of the country—Ireland, Scotland, Guernsey, Jersey, and the Isle of Wight.

“A month before Christmas we used to put the figures by, for the weather didn’t suit; and then we went with a galantee show of a magic lantern. We showed it on a white sheet, or on the ceiling, big or little, in the houses of the gentlefolk, and the schools where there was a breaking-up. It was shown by way of a treat to the scholars. There was Harlequin, and Billy Button, and such-like. We had ten and sixpence and fifteen shillings for each performance, and did very well indeed. I have that galantee show now, but it brings in very little.

“Green’s dead, and all in the line’s dead, but me. The galantee show don’t answer, because magic lanterns are so cheap in the shops. When we started, magic lanterns wasn’t so common; but we can’t keep hold of a good thing in these times. It was a reg’lar thing for Christmas once—the galantee shows.

“I can make, in a holiday time, twenty shillings a-week; but that’s only at holiday times, and is just a mere casualty a few times a year.

“I do other jobs, when I can get ’em—at other times, I delivers bills, carries boards, and helps at funerals.”

“The proper name of my exhibition,” said a showman of this class to me, “is Lez Hombres, or the shades; that’s the proper name for it, for Baron Rothschild told me so when I performed before him. We calls it the Chinese galantee show. It was invented over there with the Chinese, and some travellers went over there and see them doing it, and they come over here and tell us about it. They didn’t do it as we do, you know. As for doing pieces, we lick them out of the field. Them only did the shadows, we do a piece with ’em.

“I should say, sir,—let me calculate—it is about twenty-six years since the ombres first come out. Reduce it if you like, but that’s the time. Thomas Paris was the first as come out with them. Then Jim Macklin, and Paul Herring the celebrated clown, and the best showman of Punch in the world for pantomime tricks—comic business, you know, but not for showing in a gentleman’s house—was the next that ever come out in the streets with the Chinese galantee show. I think it was his own ingenuity that first gave him the notion. It was thoughts of mind, you know,—you form the opinion in your own mind, you know, by taking it from the Chinese. They met a friend of theirs who had come from China, and he told him of the shadows. One word is as good as fifty, if it’s a little grammatical—sound judgment. When it first come out, he began with the scene called ‘Mr. Jobson the Cobbler,’ and that scene has continued to be popular to the present day, and the best scene out. He did it just equally the same as they do it now, in a Punch-and-Judy frame, with a piece of calico stretched in front, and a light behind to throw the shadows on the sheet.

“Paul Herring did excellent well with it—nothing less than 30s. or 2l. a-night. He didn’t stop long at it, because he is a stage clown, and had other business to attend to. I saw him the first time he performed. It was in the Waterloo-road, and the next night I were out with one of my own. I only require to see a thing once to be able to do it; but you must have ingenuity, or it’s no use whatsumdiver. Every one who had a Punch-and-Judy frame took to it; doing the regular business in the day and at night turning to the shadows. In less than a week there were two others out, and then Paul Herring cut it. He only done it for a lark. He was hard up for money and got it.

“I was the first that ever had a regular piece acted in his show. I believe there’s nobody else as did, but only them that’s copied me. They come and follow me, you understand, and copied me. I am the author of ‘Cobbler Jobson,’ and ‘Kitty biling the Pot, or the Woodchopper’s Frolic.’ There’s ‘Billy Button’s journey to Brentford on horseback, and his favorite servant, Jeremiah Stitchem, in want of a situation.’ I’m the author of that, too. It’s adapted from the equestrian piece brought out at Astley’s. I don’t know who composed ‘the Broken Bridge.’ It’s too far gone by to trace who the first author is, but it was adapted from the piece brought out formerly at Drury-lane Theatre. Old ancient gentlemen has told me so who saw it, when it was first brought out, and they’re old enough to be my grandfather. I’ve new revised it.

“We in general goes out about 7 o’clock, because we gets away from the noisy children—they place them to bed, and we gets respectable audiences. We choose our places for pitching: Leicester-square is a very good place, and so is Islington, but Regent-street is about the principal. There’s only two of us about now, for it’s dying away. When I’ve a mind to show I can show, and no mistake, for I’m better now than I was twenty years ago.

“‘Kitty biling the Pot, or the Woodchopper’s Frolic,’ is this. The shadow of the fireplace is seen with the fire alight, and the smoke is made to go up by mechanism. The woodchopper comes in very hungry and wants his supper. He calls his wife to ask if the leg of mutton is done. He speaks in a gruff voice. He says, ‘My wife is very lazy, and I don’t think my supper’s done. I’ve been chopping wood all the days of my life, and I want a bullock’s head and a sack of potatoes.’ The wife comes to him and speaks in a squeaking voice, and she tells him to go and chop some more wood, and in half-an-hour it will be ready. Exaunt. Then the wife calls the daughter Kitty, and tells her to see that the pot don’t boil over; and above all to be sure and see that the cat don’t steal the mutton out of the pot. Kitty says, ‘Yes, mother, I’ll take particular care that the mutton don’t steal the cat out of the pot.’ Cross-questions, you see—comic business. Then mother says, ‘Kitty, bring up the broom to sweep up the room,’ and Kitty replies, ‘Yes, mummy, I’ll bring up the room to sweep up the broom.’ Exaunt again. It’s regular stage business and cross-questions. She brings up the broom, and the cat’s introduced whilst she is sweeping. The cat goes Meaw! meaw! meaw! and Kitty gives it a crack with the broom. Then Kitty gets the bellows and blows up the fire. It’s a beautiful representation, for you see her working the bellows, and the fire get up, and the sparks fly up the chimney. She says, ‘If I don’t make haste the mutton will be sure to steal the cat out of the pot.’ She blows the fire right out, and says, ‘Why, the fire’s blowed the bellows out! but I don’t mind, I shall go and play at shuttlecock.’ Child like, you see. Then the cat comes in again, and says, Meaw! meaw! and then gets up and steals the mutton. You see her drag it out by the claw, and she burns herself and goes, spit! spit! Then the mother comes in and sees the fire out, and says, ‘Where my daughter? Here’s the fire out, and my husband’s coming home, and there isn’t a bit of mutton to eat!’ She calls ‘Kitty, Kitty!’ and when she comes, asks where she’s been. ‘I’ve been playing at shuttlecock.’ The mother asks, ‘Are you sure the cat hasn’t stolen the mutton.’ ‘Oh, no, no, mother,’ and exaunt again. Then the mother goes to the pot. She’s represented with a squint, so she has one eye up the chimney and another in the pot. She calls out, ‘Where’s the mutton? It must be down at the bottom, or it has boiled away.’ Then the child comes in and says, ‘Oh! mother, mother, here’s a great he-she-tom cat been and gone off with the mutton.’ Then the mother falls down, and calls out, ‘I shall faint, I shall faint! Oh! bring me a pail of gin.’ Then she revives, and goes and looks in the pot again. It’s regular stage business, and if it was only done on a large scale would be wonderful. Then comes the correction scene. Kitty comes to her, and her mother says, ‘Where have you been?’ and Kitty says, ‘Playing at shuttlecock, mummy;’ and then the mother says, ‘I’ll give you some shuttlecock with the gridiron,’ and exaunt, and comes back with the gridiron; and then you see her with the child on her knee correcting of her. Then the woodchopper comes in and wants his supper, after chopping wood all the days of his life. ‘Where’s supper?’ ‘Oh, a nasty big he-she-tom cat has been and stole the mutton out of the pot.’ ‘What?’ passionate directly, you see. Then she says, ‘You must put up with bread and cheese.’ He answers, ‘That don’t suit some people,’ and then comes a fight. Then Spring-heeled Jack is introduced, and he carries off the fireplace and pot and all. Exaunt. That’s the end of the piece, and a very good one it was. I took it from Paris, and improved on it. Paris had no workable figures. It was very inferior. He had no fire. It’s a dangerous concern the fire is, for it’s done with a little bit of the snuff of a candle, and if you don’t mind you go alight. It’s a beautiful performance.

“Our exhibition generally begins with a sailor doing a hornpipe, and then the tight-rope dancing, and after that the Scotch hornpipe dancing. The little figures regularly move their legs as if dancing, the same as on the stage, only it’s more cleverer, for they’re made to do it by ingenuity. Then comes the piece called ‘Cobbler Jobson.’ We call it ‘the laughable, comic, and interesting scene of old Father Jobson, the London cobbler; or, the old Lady disappointed of her Slipper.’ I am in front, doing the speaking and playing the music on the pandanean pipe. That’s the real word for the pipe, from the Romans, when they first invaded England. That’s the first music ever introduced into England, when the Romans first invaded it. I have to do the dialogue in four different voices. There is the child, the woman, the countryman, and myself, and there’s not many as can do it besides me and another.

“The piece called Cobbler Jobson is this. It opens with the shadow of a cottage on one side of the sheet, and a cobbler’s stall on the other. There are boots and shoes hanging up in the windows of the cobbler’s stall. Cobbler Jobson is supposed at work inside, and heard singing:

“Then he sings again:

“Then the figure of a little girl comes in and raps at the door: ‘Mr. Jobson, is my mamma’s slipper done?’ ‘No, miss, it’s not done; but if you’ll call in half-an-hour it shall be well done, for I’ve taken the soles off and put the upper leathers in a pail to soak.’ ‘What, in a pail?’ ‘Yes, my dear, without fail.’ ‘Then you won’t disappint.’ ‘No, my dear, I’d sooner a pot than a pint.’ ‘Then I may depend?’ ‘Yes, and you won’t have it.’ He says this aside, so the girl don’t hear him. Then Jobson begins to sing again. He comes in front and works. You see his lapstone and the hammer going. He begins to sing:

“Then the little girl comes in again to know if the slipper is done, and as it isn’t, it’s ‘My dear, you must go without it.’ Then she gets impertinent, and says, ‘I shan’t go with it, you nasty old waxy, waxy, waxy, waxy, waxy! Oh, you nasty old ball of bristles and bunch of wax!’ Then he tries to hit her, and she runs into the house, and as soon as he’s at work she comes out again: ‘Ah, you nasty cobbler! who’s got a lump of wax on his breeches? who sold his wife’s shirt to buy a ha’porth of gin?’ Then the cobbler is regularly vexed, and he tries to coax her into the stall to larrup her. ‘Here, my dear, here’s a lump of pudden and a farden.’ ‘Oh, yes, you nasty old cobbler! you only want to give me a lump of pudden on my back.’ ‘Here’s a penny, my dear, if you’ll fetch it.’ ‘Chuck it here, and I’ll fetch it.’ At last she goes into the stall, and she gets a hiding with the hammer. She cries out, ‘You nasty old cobbler waxy! waxy, waxy! I’ll go and tell my mother all about it.’ That’s what we call the aggriwating scene; and next comes the passionate scene.

“He begins singing one of his songs. He thinks he’s all right now he’s got rid of the girl.

“Then comes in the old lady, shaking with rage. ‘How dare you to strike my child in this here kind of a manner! Come out of the stall, or I’ll pull you out neck and crop!’ Then Jobson is in a funk, and expects a hiding. ‘Oh, mum! I’m very sorry, but your child said, I skinned a cat for ninepence, and called me cobbler waxy, waxy, waxy.’ ‘I won’t believe a word of it, Mr. Jobson.’ ‘Yes, mum, your child’s very insaulting.’ ‘How dare you strike the chick? You nasty old villain! I’ll tear the eyes out of you.’

“A fight then commences between them, and the old lady gets the worst of it. Then they make it up, and they’ll have some gin. ‘I’ll be a penny to your threepence,’ says the cobbler; and the old lady says, ‘Oh, I can always treat myself.’ Then there’s another fight, for there’s two fights in it. The old lady gets the worst of it, and runs into the cottage, and then old Jobson cries, ‘I’d better be off, stall and all, for fear she should come back with the kitchen poker.’ That finishes up the scene, don’t you see, for he carries off the stall with him.

“Cobbler Jobson is up to the door, I think. It’s first rate; it only wants elaborating. ‘Billy Button’ is a very laughable thing, and equally up to the door. There’s another piece, called ‘Billy Waters, the celebrated London Beggar;’ and that’s a great hit. There’s the ‘Bull-baiting.’ That’s all the scenes I know of. I believe I am the only man that knows the words all through. ‘Kitty biling the pot’ is one of the most beautifullest scenes in the world. It wants expounding, you know; for you could open it the whole length of the theatre. I wanted to take Ramsgate Theatre, and do it there; but they wanted 2l. a-night, and that was too much for me. I should have put a sheet up, and acted it with real figures, as large as life.

“When I was down at Brighton, acting with the Chinese galantee show, I was forced to drop performing of them. Oh dear! oh dear! don’t mention it. You’d have thought the town was on fire. You never saw such an uproar as it made; put the town in such an agitation, that the town authorities forced me to desist. I filled the whole of North-street, and the people was pressing upon me so, that I was obliged to run away. I was lodging at the Clarence Hotel in North-street, at the time. I ran off down a side-street. The next day the police come up to me and tell me that I mustn’t exhibit that performance again.

“I shall calculate it at 5s. a-night, when I exhibit with the ombres. We don’t go out every night, for it’s according to the weather; but when we do, the calculation is 5s. every night. Sometimes it is 10s., or it may be only 2s. 6d.; but 5s. is a fair balance. Take it all the year round, it would come to 9s. a-week, taking the good weather in the bad. It’s no use to exaggerate, for the shoe is sure to pinch somewhere if you do.

“We go out two men together, one to play the pipes and speak the parts, and the other to work the figures. I always do the speaking and the music, for that’s what is the most particular. When we do a full performance, such as at juvenile parties, it takes one about one hour and a quarter. For attending parties we generally gets a pound, and, perhaps, we may get three or four during the Christmas holiday-time, or perhaps a dozen, for it’s according to the recommendation from one to another. If you goes to a gentleman’s house, it’s according to whether you behave yourself in a superior sort of a manner; but if you have any vulgarity about you you must exaunt, and there’s no recommendation.

“Tom Paris, the first man that brought out the ombres in the streets, was a short, stout man, and very old. He kept at it for four or five years, I believe, and he made a very comfortable living at it, but he died poor; what became of him I do not know. Jim Macklin I’ve very little knowledge of. He was a stage performer, but I’m not aware what he did do. I don’t know when he died, but he’s dead and gone; all the old school is dead and gone—all the old ancient performers. Paul Herring is the only one that’s alive now, and he does the clown. He’s a capital clown for tricks; he works his own tricks: that’s the beauty of him.

“When we are performing of an evening, the boys and children will annoy us awful. They follow us so that we are obliged to go miles to get away from them. They will have the best places; they give each other raps on the head if they don’t get out of each other’s way. I’m obliged to get fighting myself, and give it them with the drumsticks. They’ll throw a stone or two, and then you have to run after them, and swear you’re going to kill them. There’s the most boys down at Spitalfields, and St. Luke’s, and at Islington; that’s where there’s the worst boys, and the most audaciousest. I dare not go into St. Luke’s; they spile their own amusement by making a noise and disturbance. Quietness is everything; they haven’t the sense to know that. If they give us any money it’s very trifling, only, perhaps, a farden or a halfpenny, and then it’s only one out of a fifty or a hundred. The great business is to keep them quiet. No; girls ain’t better behaved than boys; they was much wus. I’d sooner have fifty boys round me than four girls. The impertinence of them is above bearing. They come carrying babies, and pushing, and crowding, and tearing one another to pieces. ‘You’re afore me—I was fust—No you wasn’t—Yes I was’—and that’s the way they go on. If a big man comes in front I’m obliged to ask him to go backwards, to let the little children to see. If they’re drunk, perhaps they won’t, and then there’s a row, and all the children will join in. Oh, it’s dreadful erksome!

“I was once performing on Islington-green, and some drunken people, whilst I was collecting my money, knocked over the concern from wanton mischief. They said to me, ‘We haven’t seen nothing, master.’ I said, ‘I can see you; and haven’t you got a brown?’ Then they begun laughing, and I turned round, and there was the show in a blaze, and my mate inside a kicking. I think it was two or three drunken men did it, to injure a poor man from gaining his livelihood from the sweat of his brow. That’s eighteen years ago.

“I was up at Islington last week, and I was really obliged to give over on account of the children. The moment I put it down there was thousands round me. They was sarcy and impertinent. There was a good collection of people, too. But on account of the theatrical business we want quiet, and they’re so noisy there’s no being heard. It’s morals is everything. It’s shameful how parents lets their children run about the streets. As soon as they fill their bellies off they are, till they are hungry again.

“The higher class of society is those who give us the most money. The working man is good for his penny or halfpenny, but the higher class supports the exhibition. The swells in Regent-street ain’t very good. They comes and looks on for a moment, and then go on, or sometimes they exempt themselves with ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got no pence.’ The best is the gentlemen; I can tell them in a minute by their appearance.

“When we are out performing, we in generally burn three candles at once behind the curtain. One is of no utility, for it wants expansion, don’t you see. I don’t like naphtha or oil-lamps, ’cos we’re confined there, and it’s very unhealthy. It’s very warm as it is, and you must have a eye like a hawk to watch it, or it won’t throw the shadows. A brilliant light and a clean sheet is a great attraction, and it’s the attraction is everything. In the course of the evening we’ll burn six penny candles; we generally use the patent one, ’cos it throws a clear light. We cut them in half. When we use the others I have to keep a look-out, and tell my mate to snuff the candles when the shadows get dim. I usually say, ‘Snuff the candles!’ out loud, because that’s a word for the outside and the inside too, ’cos it let the company know it isn’t all over, and leads them to expect another scene or two.”

“I am the only man in London—and in England, I think—who is exhibiting the figuer of méchanique; that is to say, leetle figuers, that move their limbs by wheels and springs, as if they was de living cretures. I am a native of Parma in Italy, where I was born; that is, you understand, I was born in the Duchy of Parma, not in the town of Parma—in the campagne, where my father is a farmer; not a large farmer, but a little farmer, with just enough land for living. I used to work for my father in his fields. I was married when I have 20 years of age, and I have a child aged 10 years. I have only 30 years of age, though I have the air of 40. Pardon, Monsieur! all my friends say I have the air of 40, and you say that to make me pleasure.

“When I am with my father, I save up all the money that I can, for there is very leetle business to be done in the campagne of Parma, and I determine myself to come to Londres, where there is affair to be done. I like Londres much better than the campagne of Parma, because there is so much affairs to be done. I save up all my money. I become very économique. I live of very leetle, and when I have a leetle money, I say adieu to my father and I commence my voyages.

“At Paris I buy a box of music. They are made at Genève these box of music. When I come to Londres, I go to the public-house—the palais de gin, you understand—and there I show my box of music—yes, musical box you call it—and when I get some money I live very économique, and then when it become more money I buy another machine, which I buy in Paris. It was a box of music, and on the top it had leetle figuers, which do move their eyes and their limbs when I mounts the spring with the key. And then there is music inside the box at the same time. I have three leetle figuers to this box: one was Judith cutting the head of the infidel chief—what you call him?—Holeferones. She lift her arm with the sword, and she roll her eyes, and then the other hand is on his head, which it lifts. It does this all the time the music play, until I put on another figuer of the soldat which mounts the guard—yes, which is on duty. The soldat goes to sleep, and his head falls on his bosom. Then he wake again and lift his lance and roll his eyes. Then he goes to sleep again, so long until I put on the other figuer of the lady with the plate in the hand, and she make salutation to the company for to ask some money, and she continue to do this so long as anybody give her money. All the time the music in the box continues to play.

“I take a great quantity of money with these figuers, 3s. a-day, and I live very économique until I put aside a sum large enough to buy the figuers which I exhibit now.

“My most aged child is at Parma, with my father in the campagne, but my wife and my other child, which has only 18 months of age, are with me in Londres.

“It is two months since I have my new figuers. I did have them sent from Germany to me. They have cost a great deal of money to me; as much as 35l. without duty. They have been made in Germany, and are very clever figures. I will show them to you. They perform on the round table, which must be level or they will not turn round. This is the Impératrice of the French—Eugénie—at least I call her so, for it is not like her, because her cheveleure is not arranged in the style of the Impératrice. The infants like better to see the Impératrice than a common lady, that is why I call her the Imperatrice. She holds one arm in the air, and you will see she turns round like a person waltzing. The noise you hear is from the wheels of the méchanique, which is under her petticoats. You shall notice her eyes do move as she waltz. The next figure is the carriage of the Emperor of the French, with the Queen and Prince Albert and the King de Sardaigne inside. It will run round the table, and the horses will move as if they gallop. It is a very clever méchanique. I attache this wire from the front wheel to the centre of the table, or it would not make the round of the table, but it would run off the side and break itself. My most clever méchanique is the elephant. It does move its trunk, and its tail, and its legs, as if walking, and all the time it roll its eyes from side to side like a real elephant. It is the cleverest elephant of méchanique in the world. The leetle Indian on the neck, who is the driver, lift his arm, and in the pavilion on the back the chieftain of the Indians lift his bow and arrow to take aim, and put it down again. That méchanique cost me very much money. The elephant is worth much more than the Impératrice of the French. I could buy two—three—Impératrice for my elephant. I would like sooner lose the Impératrice than any malheur arrive to my elephant. There are plenty more Impératrice, but the elephant is very rare. I have also a figuer of Tyrolese peasant. She go round the table a short distance and then turn, like a dancer. I must get her repaired. She is so weak in her wheels and springs, which wind up under her petticoats, like the Impératrice. She has been cleaned twice, and yet her méchanique is very bad. Oh, I have oiled her; but it is no good, she must be taken to pieces.

“When I sent to Germany to get these méchanique made for me, I told the mechanician what I desired, and he made them for me. I invented the figuers out of my own head, and he did the méchanique. I have voyaged in Holland, and there I see some méchanique, and I noticed them, and then I gave the order to do so and so. My elephant is the best of my leetle figures; there is more complication.

“I first come to England eighteen years ago, before I was married, and I stop here seven years; then I go back again to Parma, and then I come back again to England four years ago, and here I stop ever since.

“I exhibit my leetle figures in the street. The leetle children like to see my figuers méchanique dance round the table, and the carriage, with the horses which gallop; but over all they like my elephant, with the trunk which curls up in front, like those in the Jardin des Plantes, or what you call it Zoological Gardens.

“When I am in the street I have two men beside myself, one plays the organ, and the other carry the box with the méchanique figuers inside, and I carry the table. The box with the méchanique is in weight about 80 lbs. English, and there are straps at the back for the arms to go through. It is as large as a chest of drawers, for the leetle figures are eighteen inches high, and each has a compartment to itself. I pay my men 1l. a-month, besides lodge, clean, and grub him.

“The organ for the music is mine. I have another organ, with a horse to draw it, which I want to sell; for the horse, and the two men to play it, destroy all the profits.

“When I make my figuers to play in the street I must make the table level, for they will not mount up a hill, because the méchanique is not sufficiently strong for that. I go to the West-end to show my leetle figures to the gentlemans and ladies, and their families; and I go to the East-end to the families of the work-people. I also go to Brixton and Hoxton, where they are severe for religion. They like my figures because they are moral, and their children can see them without sinning. But everywhere my figures have much success. Of all the places, I prefer, rather, Regent-street, and there I go to the leetle streets, in the corners, close by the big street. If I calcule how much money I receive for all the year,—but I have only had them two months,—it is six shillings by day regularly. Sometime I take ten shillings, and sometimes four shillings, but it settles itself to six shillings a-day. After paying for my men, and to clean, lodge, and grub them, I have three shillings for myself.

“In wet weather, when it makes rain, or when there is fog, I cannot quit my house to show my figures, for the humidity attack the springs and wheels of the méchanique: besides, when it falls rain the dresses of my figuers are spoiled; and the robes of the Impératrice and the Tyrolese peasant are of silk and velvet bodies, with spangles, and they soon spoil. They cost me much money to repair their springs,—never less than eight shillings for each time: my peasant has been arranged twice in her springs. It was a watchmaker who arranged her, and he had to take all her inside out; and you know what those kind of people charge for their time.

“Sometimes, when I am out with my figuers, the ladies ask me to perform my figuers before their windows, to show them to their families. The leetle children look through the window, and then they cannot hear the movement of the méchanique, and the figuers look like living. When the organ play a valtz to the Impératrice, he has to turn the handle quick at the commencement, when the spring is strong in the méchanique, and she turn quick; and to make the music slow when she turn less often, when the springs get weak at the end. This makes it have the look of being true to one living,—as if she danced to the music, although the organ play to her dancing. I always mount the figures with the key myself.

“I have never performed to a school of young scholars, but I have visited evening-parties of children with my méchanique. For that they give me sometimes 8s., sometimes 10s., just as they are generous. My méchanique require nearly one hour to see them to perfection. The Impératrice of the French is what they admire more than the paysanne of Tyrol. The dress of the Impératrice has a long white veil behind her hairs, but her costume is not so soignée as the peasant’s, for she has no spangles; but they like to see the Impératrice of the French, and they excuse her toilet because she is noble. My elephant is the greatest delight for them, because it is more complicated in its méchanique. I have always to mount with the key the springs in its inside at least three times before they are fatigued with admiring it.

“I never perform in the streets during the night, because the air is damp, and it causes injures to my méchanique; besides, I must have lights to show off the costume of my figuers, and my table is not large enough.

“It is not only the leetle children that admire my méchanique, but persons of a ripe age. I often have gentlemen and ladies stand round my table, and they say ‘Very clever!’ to see the lady figuers valtz, but above all when my elephant lift his trunk. The leetle children will follow me a long way to see my figuers, for they know we cannot carry the box far without exhibiting, on account of its weight. But my table is too high for them, unless they are at a distance to see the figuers perform. If my table was not high, the leetle children would want to take hold of my figuers. I always carry a small stick with me; and when the leetle children, who are being carried by other leetle children, put their hand to my figuers, I touch them with stick, not for to hurt them, but to make them take their hand away and prevent them from doing hurt to my méchanique.

“When the costume of my Impératrice is destroyed by time and wear, my wife makes new clothes for her. Yes, as you say, she is the dress-maker of the Impératrice of the French, but it is not the Emperor who pays the bill, but myself. The Impératrice—the one I have, not that of the Emperor—does not want more than half a yard of silk for a petticoat. In the present style of fashion I make her petticoat very large and full, not for the style, but to hide the méchanique in her inside.”

“It must be about eight years since I first exhibited the telescope. I have three telescopes now, and their powers vary from about 36 to 300. The instruments of the higher power are seldom used in the streets, because the velocity of the planets is so great that they almost escape the eye before it can fix it. The opening is so very small, that though I can pass my eye on a star in a minute, an ordinary observer would have the orb pass away before he could accustom his eye to the instrument. High power is all very well for separating stars, and so forth; but I’m like Dr. Kitchener, I prefer a low power for street purposes. A street-passer likes to see plenty of margin round a star. If it fills up the opening he don’t like it.

“My business is a tailor. I follow that business now. The exhibiting don’t interfere with my trade. I work by day at tailoring, and then, at this time of the year (26th Oct. 1856), I go out with the instrument about six o’clock. You see I can, with a low power, see Jupiter rise. It is visible at about half-past five, but it gets above the horizon, out of the smoke, about a quarter past six. Saturn rises about ten.

“From a boy I was fond of philosophical instruments. I was left an orphan when I was ten years of age; indeed, I haven’t a relation in the world that I’m aware of, only excepting my wife’s family. My mother died the same year as the Princes Charlotte (1818) for I can remember her being in mourning for her. My name is a very peculiar one—it is Tregent. This will show you that it is. I some time ago advertised an instrument for sale, and I had a letter from gentleman living in Liverpool. He said that he was sitting down to lunch and he took up the paper, and cried out, ‘Good God! here’s my name.’ He sent for paper and pens and wrote off at once. He asked whether I was a relation of Tregent, the great chronometer maker. He said he always thought he was the only Tregent in England. He said he was a bachelor, and hoped I was too. Perhaps he wanted the name to die out. His father, he told me, kept a paper-mill. We corresponded a long time, till I was tired, and then one day a friend of mine said, ‘Let me write to him, and I’ll tell him that if he wants any more information he must pay your expenses down to Liverpool, and you’ll pay him a visit.’ This letter was sent, and by and by comes an answer, telling me that I was no gentleman to make such a proposition, and then the matter dropped.

“When I was six years old I was brought up to tailoring. I was kept very close to work—always on the board, working. I even took my meals there. I don’t consider it was hard, for it was done for my own benefit. If there was no work going on I used to be made to learn verses out of the Bible. I highly respected my master, for I consider this was done for my benefit. He died in the country, and I was sorry for it; for if I had known it, I would have gone anywhere to see him buried—ay, even if it had been a hundred miles off. I stopped with this party till I was ten years old.

“The next party I was with I was ’prenticed to, but he failed when I had been with him three or four years, and then I had more the keeping of him than he of me; I had that resolve in me even at that young age.

“After I finished my ’prentice articles I went with my society card on the tramp. I went all through Yorkshire, going to the tailors’ houses of call, where the clubs are held, and a certain sum of money subscribed weekly, to relieve what are called tramps. In some towns I worked for months—such as Leeds. What is called ‘a tramp’ by tailors, means a man searching for work about the country. After I got back to London I went to my trade again, and I was particularly fortunate in getting good situations. Whenever I was out of work I’d start off to the country again. I was three years in Brighton, doing well, and I had six men under me.

“It’s about eight years ago that I first exhibited in the streets. It was through a friend of mine that I did this. Me and my wife was at Greenwich-hill one Sunday. I was looking through a pocket-telescope of mine, and he says, ‘Look through mine.’ I did so, and it was a very good one; and then he says, ‘Ah, you should see one I’ve got at home; it’s an astronomical one, and this is terrestrial.’ I did so, and went and saw it. The first planet I saw was Venus. She was in her horns then, like the moon. She exhibits the same phases as the moon, as does also Mercury; sometimes horns, sometimes half a sphere, and so on; but they’re the only two planets that’s known that does so. When I saw this, I said, ‘Well, I must have something of this sort.’ I went to a telescope-maker up at Islington, and I made a bargain with him, and he was to make me a day-and-night telescope for five suits of clothes. Well, I bought the cloth, and raised all the money to complete my part of the contract, and then, when the telescope was finished, it wasn’t worth a d——. You might as well have looked through a blacking-bottle. When I told him of it he said he couldn’t help it. It was worth something to look at, but not to look through. I pawned it for 15l. and sold the ticket for 5l. The gentleman who bought it was highly satisfied with it till he found it out. I took this one out in the streets to exhibit with, but it was quite useless, and showed nothing; you could see the planetary bodies, but it defined nothing. The stars was all manner of colours and forks. The bodies look just like a drawing in chalk smudged out. The people who looked through complained, and wouldn’t come and look again, and that’s why I got rid of it.

“The next telescope I had made was by the manufacturer who made the one my friend first showed me. That maker has taken some hundred of pounds of me since then; indeed, I’ve had eleven five or six feet telescopes of him, and his name is Mr. Mull, of 13 Albion-place, Clerkenwell, and the value of each of the object-glasses was, on the average, 30l., though he charged me only trade-price, so I got them for less.

“The first telescope that was of any good that I exhibited with in the streets was worth to me 25l. If you was to go to Dollond he would have charged 105l. on a common tripod stand. I had it done under my own direction, and by working myself at it, I got it very cheap. It wasn’t good enough for me, so I got rid of it. I’ve got so nice about object glasses and their distinct vision, and the power they bear, that I have never rested content until I have a telescope that would suit the first astronomer.

“I’ve got one now that will bear a magnifying power 300 times, and has an object-glass 4¼ inches diameter, with a focal length of 5 feet 6 inches. The stand is made of about 250 pieces of brass-work, and has ratchet action, with vertical and horizontal movement. It cost me 80l. and Ross, Featherstone-buildings, would charge 250l. for it. I’m so initiated into the sort of thing, that I generally get all my patterns made, and then I get the castings made, and then have them polished. The price of the object-glass is 30l. I’m going to take that one out next week. It will weigh about 1½ cwt. My present one is a very fine instrument indeed. I’ve nothing but what is excellent. You can see Jupiter and his satellites, and Saturn and his belt. This is a test for it. Supposing I want to see Polaris—that’s the small star that revolves once in 180 years round the pole. It isn’t the pole star. It isn’t visible to the naked eye. It’s one of the tests for a telescope. My instrument gives it as small as a pin’s point. There’s no magnifying power with a telescope upon stars. Of course they make them more brilliant, and give some that are not visible to the naked eye, for hundreds and thousands will pass through the field in about an hour. They also separate double stars, and penetrate into space, nebula, and so on; but they don’t increase the size of stars, for the distance is too great.

“I’ve worked about five years with this last one that I’ve now. It weighs, with the stand, about 1 cwt., and I have to get somebody to help me along with it. One of my boys in general goes along with me.

STREET TELESCOPE EXHIBITOR.

[From a Photograph.]

“It depends greatly upon the weather as to what business I do. I’ve known the moon for a month not to be visible for twenty days out of the lunation. I’ve known that for three moons together, the atmosphere is so bad in London. When I do get a good night I have taken 35s.; but then I’ve taken out two instruments, and my boy has minded one. I only charge a penny a peep. Saturdays, and Mondays, and Sundays, are the best nights in my neighbourhood, and then I can mostly reckon on taking 20s. The other nights it may be 7s. or 8s., or even only 2s. 6d. Sometimes I put up the instrument when it’s very fine, and then it’ll come cloudy, and I have to take it down again and go home. Taking the year round, I should think I make 125l. a-year by the telescope. You see my business, as a tailor, keeps me in of a day, or I might go out in the day and show the sun. Now to-day the sun was very fine, and the spots showed remarkably well, and if I’d been out I might have done well. I sold an instrument of mine once to a fireman who had nothing to do in the day, and thought he could make some money exhibiting the telescope. He made 8s. or 10s. of an afternoon on Blackfriar’s-bridge, showing the dome of St. Paul’s at the time they were repairing it.

“When the instrument is equatoreally mounted and set to time, you can pick out the stars in the day-time, and they look like black specs. I could show them.

“People can’t stop looking through the telescope for long at a time, because the object is soon out of the field, because of the velocity of the earth’s motion and the rapidity at which the planets travel round the sun. Jupiter, for instance, 26,000 miles an hour, and Saturn 29,000, soon removes them from the field of the telescope. I have to adjust the telescope before each person looks through. It has, I fancy, hurt my eyes very much. My eyesight has got very weak through looking at the moon, for on a brilliant night it’s like a plate of silver, and dazzles. It makes a great impression on the retina of the eye. I’ve seen when looking through the telescope a black spec, just as if you had dropped a blot of ink on a piece of paper. I’ve often had dancing lights before my eyes, too—very often. I find a homœopathic globule of belladonna very excellent for that.

“When I exhibit, I in general give a short lecture whilst they are looking through. When I am not busy I make them give me a description, for this reason: others are listening, and they would sooner take the word of the observer than mine. Suppose I’m exhibiting Jupiter, and I want to draw customers, I’ll say, ‘How many moons do you see?’ They’ll answer, ‘Three on the right, and one on the left,’ as they may be at that time. Perhaps a rough standing by will say, ‘Three moons! that’s a lie! there’s only one, everybody knows.’ Then, when they hear the observer state what he sees, they’ll want to have a peep.

“When I’m busy, I do a lecture like this. We’ll suppose I’m exhibiting Saturn. Perhaps we had better begin with Jupiter, for the orbit of Saturn’s satellites is so extensive that you can never see them all without shifting the glass: indeed it’s only in very fine climates, such as Cincinnati, where the eight may be observed, and indeed up to a late period it was believed there were only seven.

“When the observer sees Jupiter, I begin: ‘Do you see the planet, sir?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I introduce to you Jupiter with all his four satellites. It is distant 600 millions of miles from the sun, and its diameter is about 7900 miles. It travels round the sun at about 27,000 miles an hour, and its orbit is over four years, and of course its seasons are four times the length of ours, the summer lasting for a year instead of three months.’ One night an Irishman, who was quite the gentleman, came to me rather groggy, and he says,—‘Old boy, what are you looking at?’ ‘Jupiter,’ says I. ‘What’s that?’ says he. ‘A planet you may call it, sir,’ says I; ‘and the price is one penny.’ He paid me and had a look, and then he cries out, ‘What a deception is this! By J—— it’s a moon, and you call it a star!’ ‘There are four moons,’ said I. ‘You’re another,’ said he; ‘there’s a moon and four stars. You ought to be took up for deception.’ After a time he had another look, and then he was very pleased, and would bring out gin from a neighbouring public-house, and if he brought one, he brought seven.

“Another time, a man was looking through; and I had a tripod stand then, and one of the legs was out, and he pushed the tube and down it came right in his eye. He gave a scream and shouted out, ‘My God! there’s a star hit me slap in the eye!’

“Another night an old woman came up to me, and she says, ‘God bless you, sir; I’m so glad to see you. I’ve been looking for you ever such a time. You charge a penny, don’t you? I’m a charwoman, sir, and would you believe it, I’ve never had a penny to spare. What are you looking at? The moon? Well, I must see it.’ I told her she should see it for nothing, and up she mounted the steps. She was a heavy lusty woman, and I had to shove her up with my shoulder to get up the steps. When she saw the moon she kept on saying, ‘Oh, that’s beautiful! well, it is beautiful! And that’s the moon, is it? Now, do tell me all about it.’ I told her all about Mount Tycho, and about the light of the sun being seen on the mountain tops, and so on. When she’d looked for a time, she said, ‘Well, your instrument is a finer one than my master’s, but it don’t show so much as his, for he says he can see the men fighting in it.’ This made me laugh so, I very nearly let her tumble by taking my shoulder away from under her. But when she came down the steps, she said something quite moved me. She threw her hands up and cried, ‘If this moon is so beautiful and wonderful, what must that God be like who made it?’ And off she went. It was very fine, wasn’t it?

“Sometimes when I’m exhibiting there is quite a crowd collects. I’ve seen them sitting down on the curb smoking and drinking, whilst they are waiting for their turns to have a peep. They’ll send to the public-house for beer, and then they’ll stop for hours. Indeed, I’ve had my business quite interfered with by the mob, for they don’t go away after having their look. I seldom stop out after 12 o’clock at night.

“Sometimes when I have been exhibiting, the parties have said it was all nonsense and a deception, for the stars was painted on the glass. If the party has been anything agreeable, I’ve taken the trouble to persuade him. I’ve, for instance, placed the star on the very edge of the glass, and then they’ve seen it travel right across the field; and as I’ve told them, if it was painted it couldn’t move and disappear from the lens.

“Most of the spectators go away quite surprised and impressed with what they have seen. Some will thank me a dozen times over. Some will say, ‘Well, my penny is well laid out. I shouldn’t have credited it with my own eyes.’ Others, but there are very few of them, won’t believe when they have looked. Some, when I can see the moon on their eye as they look in, swear they don’t see it. Those I let go on and don’t take their money, for the penny is no object. When I tell the people what the wonders of the heavens are, and how each of these planets is a world, they go away wonderfully grateful and impressed.

“I went down to Portsmouth with my telescope at the time the fleet sailed under Sir Charles Napier, and the Queen led them out in her yacht. I took a great deal of money there. I didn’t exhibit in the day-time: I didn’t trouble myself. I took two guineas showing the yacht the day she sailed, and at night with the moon. The other nights, with the moon and planets only, I took from 12s. to 14s. I refused 15s. for one hour, for this reason. A lady sent her servant to ask me to go to her house, and my price is one guinea for to go out, whether for an hour, or two, or three; but she first offered me 10s., and then the next night 15s. Then I found I should have to carry my instrument, weighing one cwt., two miles into the country, and up hill all the way; so, as I was sure of taking more than 10s. where I was, I wouldn’t for an extra shilling give myself the labour. I took 12s. 6d. as it was. At Portsmouth a couple of sailors came up, and one had a look, and the other said ‘What is there to see?’ I told him the moon, and he asked the price. When I said ‘One penny,’ he says, ‘I aint got a penny, but here’s three halfpence, if that’s the same to you;’ and he gives it, and when I expected he was about to peep, he turns round and says, ‘I’ll be smothered if I’m going to look down that gallows long chimney! You’ve got your money, and that’s all your business.’ So you see there are some people who are quite indifferent to scientific exhibitions.

“There are, to the best of my knowledge, about four men besides myself, going about with telescopes. I don’t know of any more. Of these there’s only one of any account. I’ve seen through them all, so I may safely say it. I consider mine the best in London exhibiting. Mine is a very expensive instrument. Everything depends upon the object-glass. There’s glasses on some which have been thrown aside as valueless, and may have been bought for two or three pounds.

“The capital required to start a telescope in the streets all depends upon the quantity of the object-glass, from 3l. to 50l. for the object-glass alone.

“Nobody, who is not acquainted with telescopes, knows the value of object-glasses. I’ve known this offer to be made—that the object-glass should be placed in one scale and gold in the other to weigh it down, and then they wouldn’t. The rough glass from Birmingham—before it is worked—only 12 inches in diameter, will cost 96l. Chance, at Birmingham, is the principal maker of the crown and flint for optical purposes. The Swiss used formerly to be the only makers of optical metal of any account, and now Birmingham has knocked them out of the field: indeed they have got the Swiss working for them at Chance’s.

“You may take a couple of plates of the rough glass to persons ignorant of their value, and they are only twelve inches in diameter, and he would think one shilling dear for them, for they only look like the bits you see in the streets to let light through the pavement. These glasses are half flint and half crown, the flint for the concave, and the crown for the convex side. Their beauty consists in their being pure metal and quite transparent, and not stringy. Under the high magnifying power we use you see this directly, and it makes the object smudgy and distorts the vision.

“After getting the rough metal it takes years to finish the object-glass. They polish it with satin and putty. The convex has to be done so correctly, that if the lens is the 100th part of an inch out its value is destroyed.

“The well-known object-glass which was shown in the Great Exhibition of 1851, was in Mr. Ross’s hands (of Featherstone-buildings, Holborn,) for four years before it was finished. It was very good, and done him great credit. He is supposed to have lost by the job, for the price is all eat up by wages pretty near.

“The observatory on Wandsworth-common is a complete failure, owing to the object-glass being a bad one. It belongs to the Rev. Mr. Cragg. The tube is 72 feet long, I believe, and shaped like a cigar, bulging at the sides. He wanted to have a new object-glass put in, and what do you think they asked him at Birmingham for the rough metal alone?—2000l.! It is 24 inches in diameter. Mr. Ross asks 6000l., I was told, to make a new one—finished for him.

“The making of object-glasses is dreadful and tedious labour. Men have been known to go and throw their heads under waggon wheels, and have them smashed, from being regularly worn out with working an object-glass, and not being able to get the convex right. I was told by a party that one object-glass was in hand for 14 years.

“The night of the eclipse of the moon, (the 13th October, 1856,) when it was so well seen in London, I took 1l. 1d. at 1d. each. I might as well have took 2l. by charging 2d., but being so well known then I didn’t make no extra charge. They were forty deep, for everybody wished to see. I had to put two lads under the stand to prevent their being trod to death. They had to stay there for two hours before they could get a peep, and so indeed had many others to do the same. A friend of mine didn’t look at all, for I couldn’t get him near. They kept calling to the one looking through the tube, ‘Now, then, make haste, you there.’ They nearly fought for their turns. They got pushing and fighting, one crying, ‘I was first,’ and, ‘Now it’s my turn.’ I was glad when it was over, I can assure you. The buttons to my braces were dragged off my back by the pressure behind, and I had to hold up my breeches with my hand. The eclipse lasted from 21 minutes past 9 to 25 minutes past 12, and in that time 247 persons had a peep. The police were there to keep order, but they didn’t interfere with me. They are generally very good to me, and they seem to think that my exhibition improves the minds of the public, and so protect me.

“When I went to Portsmouth, I applied to Mr. Myers the goldsmith, a very opulent and rich man there, and chairman of the Esplanade Committee at Southsea, and he instantly gave me permission to place my stand there. Likewise the mayor and magistrates of Portsmouth, to exhibit in the streets.”

“I exhibit with a microscope that I wouldn’t take fifty guineas for, because it suits my purpose, and it is of the finest quality. I earn my living with it. If I were to sell it, it wouldn’t fetch more than 15l. It was presented to me by my dear sister, who went to America and died there. I’ll show you that it is a valuable instrument. I’ll tell you that one of the best lens-makers in the trade looked through it, and so he said, ‘I think I can improve it for you;’ and he made me a present of a lens, of extreme high power, and the largest aperture of magnifying power that has ever been exhibited. I didn’t know him at the time. He did it by kindness. He said, after looking through, ‘It’s very good for what it professes, but I’ll make you a present of a lens made out of the best Swiss metal.’ And he did so from the interest he felt in seeing such kinds of exhibitions in the streets. With the glass he gave me I can see cheese-mites as distinctly as possible, with their eight legs and transparent bodies, and heads shaped like a hedgehog’s. I see their jaw moving as they eat their food, and can see them lay their eggs, which are as perfect as any fowl’s, but of a bright blue colour; and I can also see them perform the duties of nature. I can also see them carry their young on their backs, showing that they have affection for their offspring. They lay their eggs through their ribs, and you can tell when they are going to lay for there is a bulging out just by the hips. They don’t sit on their eggs, but they roll them about in action till they bring forth their object. A million of these mites can walk across a flea’s back, for by Lardner’s micrometer the surface of a flea’s back measures 24 inches from the proboscis to the posterior. The micrometer is an instrument used for determining microscopic power, and it is all graduated to a scale. By Lardner’s micrometer the mite looks about the size of a large black-beetle, and then it is magnified 100,000 times. This will give you some idea of the power and value of my instrument. Three hundred gentlemen have viewed through it in one week, and each one delighted; so much so, that many have given double the money I have asked (which was a penny), such was the satisfaction my instrument gave.

“My father was a minister and local preacher in the Wesleyan Methodists. He died, poor fellow, at 27 years of age, therefore I never had an opportunity of knowing him. He was a boot and shoe maker. Such was the talent which he possessed, that, had it not been for his being lamed of one foot (from a fall off a horse), he would have been made a travelling minister. He was a wonderful clever man, and begun preaching when he was 21. He was the minister who preached on the occasion of laying the foundation-stone of Hoxton Chapel, and he drew thousands of people. I was only two years old when he died, and my mother was left with five of us to bring up. She was a visitor of the sick and the dying for the Strangers’ Benevolent Fund, and much respected for her labours. After my father’s death she was enabled to support her family of one son and four daughters by shoe-binding. She was married twice after my father’s death, but she married persons of quite opposite principles and opinions to her own, and she was not comfortable with them, but left them, and always found shelter under her son’s roof, where she died triumphantly happy.

“I was apprenticed when I was 13 years of age to a shoemaker, who was a profound philosopher, and very fond of making experiments and of lecturing on various branches of science. I could produce bills—I have them at home—such as that at the Friar’s-mount Sunday-school, some six or seven years ago, where it states that William Knock, minister and lecturer, will lecture on zoology and natural history. He’s about 70 now. Electricity is his favourite science. Whilst I was his apprentice, he had an observatory built at the top of his house in Underwood-street, Spitalfields, for the purpose of taking astronomical observations. My being in his house, and seeing him so busy with his instruments, gave me a great taste for science. I was his assistant when he went lecturing. I was apprenticed with him for five years. He was a kind and good master, and very affectionate. He encouraged me in my scientific studies, and gave me access to his library, which was immense, and consisted of 3000 volumes. Amongst other employment I used to copy out sermons for him, and he gave me a penny each, which by saving up enabled me to buy a watch of him for 5l. 5s. He was a shoemaker and manufacturer of ladies and children’s boots and shoes, so that he might have made from his 2l. to 3l. a-week, for he was not a journeyman, but an employer.

“After I was out of my time I went to Mr. Children, a bootmaker of Bethnal-green-road, well known in that locality. My master had not sufficient employment for me. One night this Mr. Children went to hear a lecture on astronomy by Dr. Bird, and when he came home he was so delighted with what he had seen, that he began telling his wife all about it. He said, ‘I cannot better explain to you the solar system, than with a mop,’ and he took the mop and dipped it into a pail of water, and began to twirl it round in the air, till the wet flew off it. Then he said, ‘This mop is the sun, and the spiral motion of the water gives the revolutions of the planets in their orbits.’ Then, after a time, he cried out, ‘If this Dr. Bird can do this, why shouldn’t I?’ He threw over his business directly, to carry out the grand object of his mind. He was making from 3l. to 4l. a-week, and his wife said, ‘Robert, you’re mad!’ He asked me if I knew anything of astronomy, and I said, ‘Sir, my old master was an astronomer and philosopher.’ Then I got books for him, and I taught him all I knew of the science of astronomy. Then he got a magic-lantern with astronomical slides. The bull’s-eye was six inches in diameter, so they were very large, so that they gave a figure of twelve feet. For the signs of the zodiac he had twelve separate small lanterns, with the large one in the centre to show the diverging rays of the sun’s light. He began with many difficulties in his way, for he was a very illiterate man, and had a vast deal to contend with, but he succeeded through all. He wrote to his father and got 500l., which was his share of the property which would have been left him on his parent’s death. At his first lecture he made many mistakes, such as, ‘Now, gentlemen, I shall present to your notice the consternations,’ at which expression the company cried, ‘Hear, hear,’ and one said, ‘We are all in a consternation here, for your lamp wants oil.’ Yet he faced all this out. I was his assistant. I taught him everything. When I told him of his mistake he’d say, ‘Never mind, I’ll overcome all that.’ He accumulated the vast sum of 6000l. by lecturing, and became a most popular man. He educated himself, and became qualified. When he went into the country, he had Archbishops and Bishops, and the highest of the clergy, to give their sanction and become patrons of his lectures. He’s now in America, and become a great farmer.

“After I left Mr. Children, I connected myself with a Young Men’s Improvement Meeting. Previous to that, I had founded a Sunday-school in the New Kent-road. Deverell-street Sabbath-schools were founded by me, and I was for fourteen years manager of it, as well as performer of the funeral service in that place; for there was a chapel, and burying-ground and vaults, attached to the schools, and I became the officiating minister for the funeral service. Three thousand children have been educated at these schools, and for fourteen years I lectured to them every Sunday on religious subjects. With the tutors and the eldest scholars I formed a Young Men’s Improvement Meeting. I became the president of that meeting, and their lecturer. I lectured on the following subjects,—Natural History, Electricity, Astronomy, and Phrenology.

“At this time I was a master-shoemaker, and doing a business of fifty guineas a-week, of which ten were profit. I built large workshops at the back of my house, which cost me 300l. Unfortunately, I lent my name to a friend for a very large amount, and became involved in his difficulties, and then necessity compelled me to have recourse to street-exhibitions for a living. When I was in affluent circumstances I had a library of 300 volumes, on scientific subjects mostly, and from them I have gleaned sufficient information to qualify me for street-exhibition, and thereby enable me to earn more money than most individuals in such circumstances.

“I began my street-life with exhibiting a telescope, and here is the origin of my doing so. I had a sister living at the west-end of the town who was a professed cook, and I used to visit her three times a-week. One night I saw a man in the Regent-circus exhibiting a telescope. I went up to him, and I said, ‘Sir, what is the object to-night?’ And he told me it was Jupiter. I was very much interested with looking at Jupiter, and I stopped with that man for two hours, conversing with him, and I saw exactly how much he took. Then I thought, ‘Why shouldn’t I do this?’ So I wrote to my brother-in-law, and I told him this man was taking at the rate of 1d. per minute, and I offered, if he would provide me with a telescope, that I should be very happy and contented to take half of the receipts as my share, and give him the other for the use of his instrument. He did so, and bought a telescope which cost him 14l. I took up my stand on London-bridge, and did very well, taking on the average 6s. a-night. I gave up the telescope for this reason,—my brother-in-law was going to America, and was anxious to call in all his money. The telescope was sold, and my sister, the professed cook, fearing that I should be left without a means of living, bought for me a microscope out of her own earnings, which cost her 5l. She said to me, ‘The microscope is better than the telescope, for the nights are so uncertain.’ She was quite right, for when the telescopes have been idle for three months at a time, I can exhibit my microscope day and night. She gave it to me as a mark of her respect. She died in America, just after she arrived. That instrument has enabled me to support an afflicted and aged mother, and to bury her comfortably when she died.

“My microscope contains six objects, which are placed on a wheel at the back, which I turn round in succession. The objects are in cell-boxes of glass. The objects are all of them familiar to the public, and are as follows:—1. The flea. 2. The human hair, or the hair of the head. 3. A section of the old oak tree. 4. The animalculæ in water. 5. Cheese-mites. And 6. The transverse section of cane used by schoolmasters for the correction of boys.

“I always take up my stand in the day-time in Whitechapel, facing the London Hospital, being a large open space, and favourable for the solar rays—for I light up the instrument by the direct rays of the sun. At night-time I am mostly to be found on Westminster-bridge, and then I light up with the best sperm oil there is. I am never interfered with by the police; on the contrary, they come and have a look, and admire and recommend, such is the interest excited.

“The first I exhibit is the flea, and I commence a short lecture as follows:—‘Gentlemen,’ I says, ‘the first object I have to present to your notice is that of a flea. I wish to direct your attention especially to the head of this object. Here you may distinctly perceive its proboscis or dart. It is that which perforates the cuticle or human skin, after which the blood ascends by suction from our body into that of the flea. Thousands of persons in London have seen a flea, have felt a flea, but have never yet been able by the human eye to discover that instrument which made them sensible of the flea about their person, although they could not catch the old gentleman. This flea, gentlemen, by Dr. Lardner’s micrometer, measures accurate 24 inches in length, and 11 across the back. My instrument, mark you, being of high magnifying power, will not show you the whole of the object at once. Mark you, gentlemen, this is not the flea of the dog or the cat, but the human flea, for each differ in their formation, as clearly proved by this powerful instrument. For they all differ in their form and shape, and will only feed upon the animal on which they are bred. Having shown you the head and shoulders, with its dart, I shall now proceed to show you the posterior view of this object, in which you may clearly discover every artery, vein, muscle and nerve, exact like a lobster in shape, and quite as large as one at 2s. 6d.’ That pleases them, you know; and sometimes I add, to amuse them, ‘An object of that size would make an excellent supper for half-a-dozen persons.’ That pleases them.

“One Irishwoman, after seeing the flea, threw up her arms and screamed out, ‘O J——! and I’ve had hundreds of them in my bed at once.’ She got me a great many customers from her exclamations. You see, my lecture entices those listening to have a look. Many listeners say, ‘Ain’t that true, and philosophical, and correct?’ I’ve had many give me 6d. and say, ‘Never mind the change, your lecture is alone worth the money.’

“I’ll now proceed to No. 2. ‘The next object I have to present to your notice, gentlemen, is that of the hair of the human head. You perceive that it is nearly as large as yonder scaffolding poles of the House of Lords.’ I say this when I am on Westminster-bridge, because it refers to the locality, and is a striking figure, and excites the listeners. ‘But mark you, it is not, like them, solid matter, through which no ray of light can pass.’ That’s where I please the gentlemen, you know, for they say, ‘How philosophical!’ ‘You can readily perceive, mark you, that they are all tubes, like tubes of glass; a proof of which fact you have before you, from the light of the lamp shining direct through the body of the object, and that light direct portrayed in the lens of your eye, called the retina, on which all external objects are painted.’ ‘Beautiful!’ says a gentleman. ‘Now, if the hair of the head be a hollow tube, as you perceive it is, then what caution you ought to exercise when you place your head in the hands of the hairdresser, by keeping your hat on, or else you may be susceptible to catch cold; for that which we breathe, the atmosphere, passing down these tubes, suddenly shuts to the doors, if I may be allowed such an expression, or, in other words, closes the pores of the skin and thereby checks the insensible perspiration, and colds are the result. Powdering the head is quite out of date now, but if a little was used on those occasions referred to, cold in the head would not be so frequent.’ What do you think of that? I never had an individual complain of my lecture yet.

“Now comes No. 3. ‘This, gentlemen, is the brave old oak, a section of it not larger than the head of a pin. Looking at it through this powerful instrument, you may accurately perceive millions of perforations, or pores, through which the moisture of the earth rises, in order to aid its growth. Of all the trees of the forest, none is so splendid as the brave old oak. This is the tree that braves the battle and the breeze, and is said to be in its perfection at 100 years. Who that looks at it would not exclaim, in the language of the song, ‘Woodman, spare that tree, and cut it not down?’ Such is the analogy existing between vegetable and animal physiology, that a small portion of the cuticle or human skin would present the same appearance, for there are millions of pores in the human skin which a grain of sand is said to cover; and here are millions of perforations through which the moisture of the earth is said to rise to aid the growth of the tree. See the similitude between the vegetable and animal physiology. Here is the exhibition of nature—see how it surpasses that of art. See the ladies at the Great Exhibition admiring the shawls that came from India: yet they, though truly deserving, could not compare with this bit of bark from the brave old oak. Here is a pattern richer and more deserving than any on any shawl, however wonderful. Where is the linendraper in this locality that can produce anything so beautiful as that on this bit of bark? Such are the works of art as compared with those of nature.’

“No. 4 is the animalculæ in water. ‘Gentlemen, the object now before you is a drop of water, that may be suspended on a needle’s point, teeming with millions of living objects. This one drop of water contains more inhabitants than the globe on which I stand. See the velocity of their motion, the action of their stomachs! the vertebræ is elegantly marked, like the boa-constrictor in the Zoological Gardens. They are all moving with perfect ease in this one drop, like the mighty monsters of the vast deep.’

“One on occasion a gentleman from St. Thomas’s Hospital disputed my statement about it’s being only one drop of water, so I said to the gent: ‘If you will accompany me to some coffee-house the drop of water shall be removed, and perhaps what you see you may believe,’ which he did, and he paid me 1s. for my experiment. He told me was a doctor, and I told him I was surprised that he was not better acquainted with the instrument; for, said I, ‘how can you tell the effects of inoculation on the cuticle, or the disease called the itch, unless you are acquainted with such an instrument?’ He was quite ashamed as he paid me for my trouble. I tell this anecdote on the bridge, and I always conclude with, ‘Now, gentlemen, whilst I was paid 1s. by the faculty for showing one object alone, I am only charging you 1d. for the whole six.’ Then I address myself to the person looking into the microscope, and say, ‘What do you think of this one drop of water, sir?’ and he says, ‘Splendid!’ Then I add, ‘Few persons would pass and re-pass this instrument without having a glance into it, if they knew the wonders I exhibit;’ and the one looking says, ‘That’s true, very true.’

“The next object is the cheese-mite—No. 5. I always begin in this way,—‘Those who are unacquainted with the study of entomology declare that these mites are beetles, and not mites; but could I procure a beetle with eight legs, I should present it to the British Museum as a curiosity.’ This is the way I clench up the mouths of those sceptics who would try to ridicule me, by showing that I am philosophic. ‘Just look at them. Notice, for instance, their head, how it represents the form of an hedgehog. The body presents that of the beetle shape. They have eight legs and eight joints. They have four legs forward and four legs back; and they can move with the same velocity forwards as they can back, such is their construction. They are said to be moving with the velocity of five hundred steps in one minute. Read Blair’s ‘Preceptor,’ where you may see a drawing of the mite accurately given, as well as read the description just given.’ A cheesemonger in Whitechapel brought me a few of these objects for me to place in my microscope. He invited his friends, which were taking supper with him, to come out and have a glance at the same objects. He gave me sixpence for exhibiting them to him, and was highly gratified at the sight of them. I asked him how he could have the impudence to sell them for a lady’s supper at 10d. a-pound. The answer he gave me was,—‘What the eye cannot see the heart never grieves.’ Then I go on,—‘Whilst this lady is extending her hand to the poor, and doing all the relief in her power, she is slaying more living creatures with her jaw-bone than ever Samson did with his.’ If it’s a boy looking through, I say, ‘Now, Jack, when you are eating bread and cheese don’t let it be said that you slay the mites with the jaw-bone of an ass. Cultivate the intellectual and moral powers superior to the passions, and then you will rise superior to that animal in intellect.’ ‘Good,’ says a gentleman, ‘good; here’s sixpence for you;’ and another says, ‘Here’s twopence for you, and I’m blessed if I want to see anything after hearing your lecture.’ Then I continue to point out the affection of the mite for its young. ‘You see fathers looking after their daughters, and mothers after their sons, when they are taking their walks; and such is their love for their young, that when the young ones are fatigued with their journey the parents take them up on their backs. Do you not see it?’ And then some will say, ‘I’ll give a penny to see that;’ and I’ve had four pennies put in my hand at once to see it. Excitement is everything in this world, sir.

“Next comes the cane—No. 6. ‘The object before you, gentlemen, is a transverse section of cane,—common cane,—such, mark you, as is used by schoolmasters for the correction of boys who neglect their tasks, or play the wag.’ I make it comic, you know. ‘This I call the tree of knowledge, for it has done more for to learn us the rules of arithmetic than all the vegetable kingdom combined. To it we may attribute the rule of three, from its influence on the mind,’—that always causes a smile,—‘just look at it for one moment. Notice, in the first place, its perforations. Where the human hand has failed to construct a micrometer for microscopic or telescopic purposes, the spider has lent its web in one case, and the cane in the other. Through the instrumentality of its perforations, we may accurately infer the magnifying power of other objects, showing the law of analogy. The perforations of this cane, apart from this instrument, would hardly admit a needle’s point, but seem now large enough for your arm to enter. This cane somewhat represents a telescopic view of the moon at the full, when in conjunction with the sun, for instance. Here I could represent inverted rocks and mountains. You may perceive them yourself, just as they would be represented in the moon’s disc through a powerful telescope of 250 times, such as I have exhibited to a thousand persons in St. Paul’s Churchyard. On the right of this piece of cane, if you are acquainted with the science of astronomy, you may depicture very accurately Mount Tycho, for instance, representing a beautiful burning mountain, like Mount Vesuvius or Etany, near the fields of Naples. You might discover accurately all the diverging streaks of light emanating from the crater. Further on to the right you may perceive Mount St. Catherine, like the blaze of a candle rushing through the atmosphere. On the left you may discover Mount Ptolemy. Such is a similar appearance of the moon’s mountainous aspect. I ask you, if the school-boy had but an opportunity of glancing at so splendid an object as the cane, should he ever be seen to shed a tear at its weight?’

“This shows that I am scientific, and know astronomy. The last part makes them laugh.

“This is the mode in which I exhibit my instrument, and such is the interest been excited in the public mind, that though a penny is the small charge which I make, that amount has been doubled and trebled by gentlemen who have viewed the instrument; and on one occasion a clergyman in the Commercial-road presented me with half-a-sovereign, for the interest he felt at my description, as well as the objects presented to his view. It has given universal satisfaction.

“I don’t go out every night with my instrument. I always go on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday, for those are the nights when I take most money, especially on the Monday and Saturday. The Monday and Saturday are generally 6s., Tuesdays about 5s., and Wednesdays about 2s. 6d. Then the Thursday averages 1s. 8d., and the Fridays, in some localities, where the men are paid on that night, are equal to Saturday. Such are the benefits arising from night exhibition. In the day it comes to rather more. I’ve been to Greenwich, and on the One-tree Hill I’ve done more with the sun light than the night light. Taking the changes of weather, such as rain and cold bleak nights, and such weather as isn’t suitable to such an exhibition, I may say safely that my income amounts to 80l. a-year. The capital required for such a business amounts to from 10l. to 20l. My instrument only cost 5l.; but it was parted with to raise money;—and I wouldn’t take 50l. for it. It was my sister’s son-in-law who sold it. It was a gift more than a sale. You can buy a very good microscope for 10l., but a great deal, of course, is required in choosing it; for you may buy a thing not worth 20s. You’d have an achromatic microscope for 20l. It costs me about 4d. a-week for oil, the best sperm, at 1s. 4d. the pint; and a quarter of a pint will last me the week. I get my specimens in London. I prepare them all myself, and always keep a stock by me. For the sake of any gentleman who may have any microscope, and wish to procure excellent living specimens of mites and animalculæ in water, may do so in this way. (This is a secret which I give from a desire which I feel to afford pleasure to gentlemen of a scientific mind.) Get mites from a cheesemonger. Mites differ in their shape and form, according to the cheese they are taken from. The Stilton-cheese differs from the Dutch-cheese mite, and so does that of the aristocratic Cheshire, as I call it. In order to rise them clear and transparent, take a wooden box, of 2½ inches deep and 2½ inches in diameter, with a thick screw-lid, and let the lid take off half-way down. Place the dust in the bottom of the box, damp the thread of the screw-lid, to make it air-tight. The mites will ascend to the lid of the box. Four or five hours afterwards unscrew the lid gently, and, removing it, let it fall gently on a piece of writing paper. The mites crawl up to the lid, and by this way you get them free from dust and clean. To make the animalculæ water, I draw from the bottom of the water-tub a small quantity of water, and I put about a handful of new hay in that water. I expose it to the influence of the solar light, or some gentle heat, for three or four hours. Skim off its surface. After washing your hands, take your finger and let one drop of the hay-water fall on the glass, and then add to it another drop of pure water to make it more transparent. This information took me some years of experience to discover. I never read it or learnt it from any one, but found it out myself; but all liberal scientific men like to share their information.

“It’s impossible for me to say how many people have looked through my instrument, but they must be counted by tens of thousands. I have had 160 looking through in one night, or 13s. 4d. worth. This was on a peculiar occasion. They average about 6s. worth. If I could get out every night I should do well. As it is, I am obliged to work at my trade of shoemaking to keep myself: for you must take it into consideration, that there are some nights when I cannot show my exhibition. Very often I have a shilling or sixpence given to me as a present by my admirers. Many a half-crown I’ve had as well.

“One night I was showing over at the Elephant and Castle, and I saw a Quaker gentleman coming along, and he said to me, ‘What art thee showing to night, friend?’ So I told him; and he says, ‘And what doth thee charge, friend?’ I answered, ‘To the working man, sir, I am determined to charge no more than a penny; but to a gentleman, I always leave it to their liberality.’ So he said, ‘Well, I like that, friend; I’ll give thee all I have.’ And he put his hand into his pocket, and he pulled out five penny pieces. You see that is what I always do; and it meets with its reward.”

Concerning these, I received the subjoined narrative from a man of considerable experience in the “profession:”—

“Being a cripple, I am obliged to exhibit a small peep-show. I lost the use of this arm ever since I was three months old. My mother died when I was ten years old, and after that my father took up with an Irishwoman, and turned me and my youngest sister (she was two years younger than me) out into the streets. My father had originally been a dyer, but was working at the fiddle-string business then. My youngest sister got employment at my father’s trade, but I couldn’t get no work, because of my crippled arms. I walked about till I fell down in the streets for want. At last a man, who had a sweetmeat-shop, took pity on me. His wife made the sweetmeats, and minded the shop while he went out a-juggling in the streets, in the Ramo Samee line. He told me as how, if I would go round the country with him, and sell prints while he was a-juggling in the public-houses, he’d find me in wittles and pay my lodging. I joined him, and stopped with him two or three year. After that, I went to work for a werry large waste-paper dealer. He used to buy up all the old back numbers of the cheap periodicals and penny publications, and send me out with them to sell at a farden a-piece. He used to give me fourpence out of every shilling, and I done very well with that, till the periodicals came so low, and so many on ’em, that they wouldn’t sell at all. Sometimes I could make 15s. on a Saturday night and a Sunday morning, a-selling the odd numbers of periodicals, such as ‘Tales of the Wars,’ ‘Lives of the Pirates,’ ‘Lives of the Highwaymen,’ &c. I’ve often sold as many as 2000 numbers on a Saturday night in the New Cut, and the most of them was works about thieves, and highwaymen, and pirates. Besides me there was three others at the same business. Altogether, I dare say, my master alone used to get rid of 10,000 copies of such works on a Saturday night and Sunday morning. Our principal customers was young men. My master made a good bit of money at it. He had been about 18 years in the business, and had begun with 2s. 6d. I was with him 15 year on and off, and at the best time I used to earn my 30s. a-week full at that time. But then I was foolish, and didn’t take care of my money. When I was at the ‘odd-number business,’ I bought a peep-show. I gave 2l. 10s. for it. I had it second-hand. I was persuaded to buy it. A person as has got only one hand, you see, isn’t like other folks, and the people said it would always bring me a meal of victuals, and keep me from starving. The peep-shows was a-doing very well then (that’s about five or six years back), when the theaytres was all a shilling to go into them whole price, but now there’s many at 3d. and 2d., and a good lot at a penny. Before the theaytres lowered, a peep-showman could make 3s. or 4s. a-day, at the least, in fine weather, and on a Saturday night about double that money. At a fair he could take his 15s. to 1l. a-day. Then there was about nine or ten peep-shows in London. These were all back-shows. There are two kinds of peep-shows, which we call ‘back-shows’ and ‘caravan-shows.’ The caravan-shows are much larger than the others, and are drawn by a horse or a donkey. They have a green-baize curtain at the back, which shuts out them as don’t pay. The showmen usually lives in these caravans with their families. Often there will be a man, his wife, and three or four children, living in one of these shows. These caravans mostly go into the country, and very seldom are seen in town. They exhibit principally at fairs and feasts, or wakes, in country villages. They generally go out of London between March and April, because some fairs begin at that time, but many wait for the fairs at May. Then they work their way right round, from village to town. They tell one another what part they’re a-going to, and they never interfere with one another’s rounds. If a new hand comes into the business, they’re werry civil, and tells him what places to work. The carawans comes to London about October, after the fairs is over. The scenes of them carawan shows is mostly upon recent battles and murders. Anything in that way, of late occurrence, suits them. Theatrical plays ain’t no good for country towns, ’cause they don’t understand such things there. People is werry fond of the battles in the country, but a murder wot is well known is worth more than all the fights. There was more took with Rush’s murder than there has been even by the Battle of Waterloo itself. Some of the carawan-shows does werry well. Their average taking is 30s. a-week for the summer months. At some fairs they’ll take 5l. in the three days. They have been about town as long as we can recollect. I should say there is full 50 of these carawan-shows throughout the country. Some never comes into London at all. There is about a dozen that comes to London regular every winter. The business in general goes from family to family. The cost of a carawan-show, second-hand, is 40l.; that’s without the glasses, and them runs from 10s. to 1l. a-piece, because they’re large. Why, I’ve knowed the front of a peep-show, with the glasses, cost 60l.; the front was mahogany, and had 36 glasses, with gilt carved mouldings round each on ’em. The scenes will cost about 6l. if done by the best artist, and 3l. if done by a common hand. The back-shows are peep-shows that stand upon trussels, and are so small as to admit of being carried on the back. The scenery is about 18 inches to 2 foot in length, and about 15 inches high. They have been introduced about fifteen or sixteen years. The man as first brought ’em up was named Billy T——; he was lame of one leg, and used to exhibit little automaton figures in the New Cut. On their first coming out, the oldest back-showman as I know on told me they could take 15s. a-day. But now we can’t do more than 7s. a-week, run Saturday and all the other days together,—and that’s through the theayters being so low. It’s a regular starving life now. We has to put up with the hinsults of people so. The back-shows generally exhibits plays of different kinds wot’s been performed at the theayters lately. I’ve got many different plays to my show. I only exhibit one at a time. There’s ‘Halonzer the Brave and the Fair Himogen;’ ‘The Dog of Montargis and the Forest of Bondy;’ ‘Hyder Halley, or the Lions of Mysore;’ ‘The Forty Thieves’ (that never done no good to me); ‘The Devil and Dr. Faustus;’ and at Christmas time we exhibit pantomimes. I has some other scenes as well. I’ve ‘Napoleon’s Return from Helba,’ ‘Napoleon at Waterloo,’ ‘The Death of Lord Nelson,’ and also ‘The Queen embarking to start for Scotland, from the Dockyard at Voolich.’ We takes more from children than grown people in London, and more from grown people than children in the country. You see, grown people has such remarks made upon them when they’re a-peeping through in London, as to make it bad for us here. Lately I have been hardly able to get a living, you may say. Some days I’ve taken 6d., others 8d., and sometimes 1s.—that’s what I call a good day for any of the week-days. On a Saturday it runs from 2s. to 2s. 6d. Of the week-days, Monday or Tuesday is the best. If there’s a fair on near London, such as Greenwich, we can go and take 3s., and 4s., or 5s. a-day, so long as it lasts. But after that, we comes back to the old business, and that’s bad enough; for, after you’ve paid 1s. 6d. a-week rent, and 6d. a-week stand for your peep-show, and come to buy a bit of coal, why all one can get is a bit of bread and a cup of tea to live upon. As for meat, we don’t see it from one month’s end to the other. My old woman, when she is at work, only gets five fardens a-pair for making a pair of drawers to send out for the convicts, and three half-pence for a shirt; and out of that she has to find her own thread. There are from six to eight scenes in each of the plays that I shows; and if the scenes are a bit short, why I puts in a couple of battle-scenes; or I makes up a pannerammer for ’em. The children will have so much for their money now. I charge a halfpenny for a hactive performance. There is characters and all—and I explains what they are supposed to be a-talking about. There’s about six back-shows in London. I don’t think there’s more. It don’t pay now to get up a new play. We works the old ones over and over again, and sometimes we buys a fresh one of another showman, if we can rise the money—the price is 2s. and 2s. 6d. I’ve been obligated to get rid on about twelve of my plays, to get a bit of victuals at home. Formerly we used to give a hartist 1s. to go in the pit and sketch off the scenes and figures of any new play that was a-doing well, and we thought ’ud take, and arter that we used to give him from 1s. 6d. to 2s. for drawing and painting each scene, and 1d. and 1½d. each for the figures, according to the size. Each play costs us from 15s. to 1l. for the inside scenes and figures, and the outside painting as well. The outside painting in general consists of the most attractive part of the performance. The New-Cut is no good at all now on a Saturday night; that’s through the cheap penny hexhibitions there. Tottenham-court-road ain’t much account either. The street-markets is the best of a Saturday night. I’m often obliged to take bottles instead of money, and they don’t fetch more than threepence a dozen. Sometimes I take four dozen of bottles in a day. I lets ’em see a play for a bottle, and often two wants to see for one large bottle. The children is dreadful for cheapening things down. In the summer I goes out of London for a month at a stretch. In the country I works my battle-pieces. They’re most pleased there with my Lord Nelson’s death at the battle of Trafalgar. ‘That there is,’ I tell ’em, ‘a fine painting, representing Lord Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar.’ In the centre is Lord Nelson in his last dying moments, supported by Capt. Hardy and the chaplain. On the left is the hexplosion of one of the enemy’s ships by fire. That represents a fine painting, representing the death of Lord Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar, wot was fought on the 12th of October, 1805. I’ve got five glasses, they cost about 5s. a-piece when new, and is about 3½ inches across, with a 3-foot focus.”

A man who, as he said, “had all his life been engaged in the profession of Acrobat,” volunteered to give me some details of the life led and the earnings made by this class of street-performers.

He at the present moment belongs to a “school” of five, who are dressed up in fanciful and tight-fitting costumes of white calico, with blue or red trimmings; and who are often seen in the quiet by-streets going through their gymnastic performances, mounted on each other’s shoulders, or throwing somersaults in the air.

He was a short, wiry-built man, with a broad chest, which somehow or another seemed unnatural, for the bones appeared to have been forced forward and dislocated. His general build did not betoken the great muscular strength which must be necessary for the various feats which he has to perform; and his walk was rather slovenly and loutish than brisk and springy, as one would have expected. He wore the same brown Chesterfield coat which we have all seen him slip over his professional dress in the street, when moving off after an exhibition.

His yellow hair reached nearly to his shoulders, and not being confined by the ribbon he usually wears across his forehead in the public thoroughfare, it kept straggling into his eyes, and he had to toss it back with a jerk, after the fashion of a horse with his nose-bag.

He was a simple, “good-natured” fellow, and told his story in a straightforward manner, which was the more extraordinary, as he prefaced his statement with a remark, “that all in his ‘school,’ (the professional term for a gang or troop,) were terribly against his coming; but that as all he was going to say was nothing but the truth, he didn’t care a fig for any of ’em.”

It is a singular fact, that this man spoke fluently both the French and German languages; and, as will be seen in his statement, he has passed many years of his life abroad, performing in several circuses, or “pitching” (exhibiting in the streets) in the various large towns of Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, Switzerland, and France.

The following is the history of his life, from his earliest remembrance,—from two years old, indeed,—down to his present age, thirty-six:—

“I am what is known as a street-posturer, or acrobat. I belong to a school of five, and we go about the streets doing pyramids, bending, juggling, and la perche.

“I’ve been at acrobating for these thirty-five years, in London and all parts of England, as well as on the Continent, in France and Germany, as well as in Denmark and Sweden; but only in the principal towns, such as Copenhagen and Stockholm; but only a little, for we come back by sea almost directly. My father was a tumbler, and in his days very great, and used to be at the theatres and in Richardson’s show. He’s acted along with Joe Grimaldi. I don’t remember the play it was in, but I know he’s acted along with him at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, at the time there was real water there. I have heard him talk about it. He brought me regular up to the profession, and when I first came out I wasn’t above two years old, and father used to dance me on my hands in Risley’s style, but not like Risley. I can just recollect being danced in his hands, but I can’t remember much about it, only he used to throw me a somersault with his hand. The first time I ever come out by myself was in a piece called ‘Snowball,’ when I was introduced in a snowball; and I had to do the splits and strides. When father first trained me, it hurt my back awfully. He used to take my legs and stretch them, and work them round in their sockets, and put them up straight by my side. That is what they called being ‘cricked,’ and it’s in general done before you eat anything in the morning. O, yes, I can remember being cricked, and it hurt me terrible. He put my breast to his breast, and then pulled my legs up to my head, and knocked ’em against my head and cheeks about a dozen times. It seems like as if your body was broken in two, and all your muscles being pulled out like India rubber.

“I worked for my father till I was twelve years of age, then I was sold for two years to a man of the name of Tagg, another showman, who took me to France. He had to pay father 5l. a-year, and keep me respectable. I used to do the same business with him as with father,—splits, and such-like,—and we acted in a piece that was wrote for us in Paris, called “Les deux Clowns anglais,” which was produced at the Porte St. Antoine. That must have been about the year 1836. We were dressed up like two English clowns, with our faces painted and all; and we were very successful, and had plenty of flowers thrown to us. There was one Barnet Burns, who was showing in the Boulevards, and called the New Zealand Chief, who was tattooed all over his body. He was very kind to me, and made me a good many presents, and some of the ladies were kind to me. I knew this Barnet Burns pretty well, because my master was drunk all day pretty well, and he was the only Englishman I had to speak to, for I didn’t know French.

“I ran away from Tagg in Paris, and I went with the ‘Frères de Bouchett,’ rope-dancers, two brothers who were so called, and I had to clown to the rope. I stopped with them three years, and we went through Belgium and Holland, and done very well with them. They was my masters, and had a large booth of their own, and would engage paraders to stand outside the show to draw the people; but they did all the performances themselves, and it was mostly at the fairs.

“From them I came to England, and began pitching in the street. I didn’t much like it, after being a regular performer, and looked upon it as a drop. I travelled right down by myself to Glasgow fair. I kept company with Wombwell’s show,—only working for myself. You see they used to stop in the towns, and draw plenty of people, and then I’d begin pitching to the crowd. I wasn’t lonely because I knew plenty of the wild-beast chaps, and, besides, I’ve done pretty well, taking two or three shillings a day, and on a Saturday and Monday generally five or six. I had a suit of tights, and a pair of twacks, with a few spangles on, and as soon as the people came round me I began to work.

“At Glasgow I got a pound a day, for I went with Mr. Mumford, who had some dancing dolls showing at the bottom of the Stone buildings. The fair is a week. And after that one of our chaps wrote to me that there was a job for me, if I liked to go over to Ireland and join Mr. Batty, who had a circus there. They used to build wooden circuses in them days, and hadn’t tents as now. I stopped a twelvemonth with him, and we only went to four towns, and the troupe did wonders. Mr. Hughes was the manager for Mr. Batty. There was Herr Hengler, the great rope-dancer among the troupe, and his brother Alfred, the great rider, as is dead now, for a horse kicked him at Bristol, and broke his arm, and he wouldn’t have it cut off, and it mortified, and he died.

“When I left Ireland I went back to Glasgow, and Mr. David Miller gave the school I had joined an engagement for three months. We had 6l. a-week between four of us, besides a benefit, which brought us 2l. each more. Miller had a large penny booth, and had taken about 12l. or 14l. a-night. There was acting, and our performances. Alexander, the lessee of the Theatre Royal, prevented him, for having acted, as he also did Anderson the Wizard of the North, who had the Circus, and acted as well, and Mumford; but they won the day.

“I left Glasgow with another chap, and we went first to Edinburgh and then to Hamburgh, and then we played at the Tivoli Gardens. I stopped abroad for fourteen years, performing at different places through France and Switzerland, either along with regular companies or else by ourselves, for there was four on us, in schools. After Hamburgh, we went to Copenhagen, and then we joined the brother Prices, or, as they call ’em there, Preece. We only did tumbling and jumping up on each other’s shoulders, and dancing the pole on our feet, what is called in French ‘trankr.’ From there we joined the brothers Layman,—both Russians they was,—who was very clever, and used to do the ‘pierrot;’ the French clown, dressed all in white,—for their clown is not like our clown,—and they danced the rope and all. The troupe was called the Russian pantomimists. There we met Herr Hengler again, as well as Deulan the dancer, who was dancing at the Eagle and at the theatres as Harlekin; and Anderson, who was one of the first clowns of the day, and a good comic singer, and an excellent companion, for he could make puns and make poems on every body in the room. He did, you may recollect, some few years ago, throw himself out of winder, and killed himself. I read it in the newspapers, and a mate of mine afterwards told me he was crazy, and thought he was performing, and said, “Hulloa, old feller! I’m coming!” and threw himself out, the same as if he’d been on the stage.

“In Paris and all over Switzerland we performed at the fairs, when we had no engagements at the regular theatres, or we’d pitch in the streets, just according. In Paris we was regular stars. There was only me and R——, and we was engaged for three months with Mr. Le Compte, at his theatre in the Passage Choiseul. It’s all children that acts there; and he trains young actors. He’s called the ‘Physician to the King;’ indeed, he is the king’s conjurer.

“I’m very fond of France; indeed, I first went to school there, when I was along with Tagg. You see I never had no schooling in London, for I was so busy that I hadn’t no time for learning. I also married in France. My wife was a great bender (used to throw herself backwards on her hands and make the body in a harch). I think she killed herself at it; indeed, as the doctors telled me, it was nothing else but that. She would keep on doing it when she was in the family way. I’ve many a time ordered her to give over, but she wouldn’t; she was so fond of it; for she took a deal of money. She died in childbed at St. Malo, poor thing!

“In France we take a deal more money than in England. You see they all give; even a child will give its mite; and another thing, anybody on a Sunday may take as much money as will keep him all the week, if they like to work. The most money I ever took in all my life was at Calais, the first Sunday cavalcade after Lent: that is the Sunday after Mardi-gras. They go out in a cavalcade, dressed up in carnival costume, and beg for the poor. There was me, Dick S——, and Jim C—— and his wife, as danced the Highland fling, and a chap they calls Polka, who did it when it first came up. We pitched about the streets, and we took 700 francs all in half-pence—that is, 28l.—on one Sunday: and you mustn’t work till after twelve o’clock, that is grand mass. There were liards and centimes, and half-sous, and all kinds of copper money, but very little silver, for the Frenchmen can’t afford it; but all copper money change into five-franc pieces, and it’s the same to me. The other chaps didn’t like the liards, so I bought ’em all up. They’re like button-heads, and such-like; and they said they wouldn’t have that bad money, so I got more than my share: for after we had shared I bought the heap of liards, and gave ten francs for the heap, and I think it brought me in sixty francs; but then I had to run about to all the little shops to get five-franc pieces. You see, I was the only chap that spoke French; so, you see, I’m worth a double share. I always tell the chaps, when they come to me, that I don’t want nothink but my share; but then I says, ‘You’re single men, and I’m married, and I must support my children;’ and so I gets a little out of the hôtel expenses, for I charges them 1s. 3d. a-day, and at the second-rate hôtels I can keep them for a shilling. There’s three or four schools now want me to take them over to France. They calls me ‘Frenchy,’ because I can talk French and German fluently—that’s the name I goes by.

“I used to go to all the fêtes in Paris along with my troupe. We have been four and we have been five in one troupe, but our general number is four, for we don’t want any more than four; for we can do the three high and the spread, and that’s the principal thing. Our music is generally the drum and pipes. We don’t take them over with us, but gets Italians to do it. Sometimes we gets a German band of five to come for a share, for you see they can’t take money as we can, for our performance will cause children to give, and with them they don’t think about it, not being so partial to music.

“Posturing to this day is called in France ‘Le Dislocation anglais;’ and indeed the English fellows is the best in the world at posturing: we can lick them all. I think they eat too much bread; for though meat’s so cheap in the south of France (2d. a-lb.), yet they don’t eat it. They don’t eat much potatoes either; and in the south they gives them to the pigs, which used to make me grumble, I’m so fond of them. Chickens, too, is 7d. the pair, and you may drink wine at 1d. the horn.

“At St. Cloud fête we were called ‘Les Quatre Frères anglais,’ and we used to pitch near the Cascade, which was a good place for us. We have shared our 30s. each a-day then easy; and a great deal of English money we got then, for the English is more generous out of England. There was the fête St. Germain, and St. Denis, and at Versailles, too; and we’ve done pretty well at each, as well as at the Champs Elysées on the 1st of May, as used to be the fête Louis-Philippe. On that fête we were paid by the king, and we had fifty francs a man, and plenty to eat and drink on that day; and every poor man in Paris has two pound of sausages and two pounds of bread, and two bottles of wine. But we were different from that, you know. We had a déjeûné, with fish, flesh, and fowl, and a dinner fit for a king, both brought to us in the Champs Elysées, and as much as ever we liked to drink all day long—the best of wine. We had to perform every alternate half-hour.

“I was in Paris when Mr. Macready come to Paris. I was engaged with my troupe at the Porte St. Martin, where we was called the Bedouin Arabs, and had to brown our faces. I went to see him, for I knew one of the actors. He was very good, and a beautiful house there was—splendid. All my other partners they paid. The price was half-a-guinea to the lowest place. The French people said he was very good, but he was mostly supported by the English that was there. An engagement at the Porte St. Martin was 1000 francs a-week for five of us; but of course we had to leave the streets alone during the four weeks we was at the theatre.

“I was in Paris, too, at the revolution in 1848, when Louis-Philippe had to run off. I was in bed, about two o’clock in the morning, when those that began the revolution was coming round—men armed; and they come into everybody’s bed-room and said, ‘You must get up, you’re wanted.’ I told them I was English; and they said, ‘It don’t matter; you get your living here, and you must fight the same as we fight for our liberty.’ They took us—four English as was in the same gang as I was with—to the Barrière du Trône, and made us pick up paving-stones. I had to carry them; and we formed four barricades right up to the Faubourg St. Antoine, close to the Bastille. We had sometimes a bit of bread and a glass of wine, or brandy, and we was four nights and three days working. There was a great deal of chaff going on, and they called me ‘le petit Supplier’ posturer, you know—but they was of all countries. We was put in the back-ground, and didn’t fire much, for we was ordered not to fire unless attacked; and we had only to keep ground, and if anything come, to give warning; but we had to supply them with powder and ammunition of one sort and another. There was one woman—a very clever woman—from Normandy, who used to bring us brandy round. She died on the barricade; and there’s a song about her now. I was present when part of the throne was burned. After that I went for a tour in Lorraine; and then I was confined in Tours for thirty-four days, for the Republicans passed a bill that all foreigners were to be sent home to their own countries; and, indeed, several manufactories where English worked had to stop, for the workmen was sent home.

STREET ACROBATS PERFORMING.

“I came back to England in 1852, and I’ve been pitching in the streets ever since. I’ve changed gangs two or three times since then; but there’s five in our gang now. There’s three high for ‘pyramids,’ and ‘the Arabs hang down;’ that is, one a-top of his shoulders, and one hanging down from his neck; and ‘the spread,’ that’s one on the shoulders, and one hanging from each hand; and ‘the Hercules,’ that is, one on the ground, supporting himself on his hands and feet; whilst one stands on his knees, another on his shoulders, and the other one a-top of them two, on their shoulders. There’s loads of tricks like them that we do, that would a’most fill up your paper to put down. There’s one of our gang dances, an Englishman, whilst the fifth plays the drum and pipes. The dances are mostly comic dances; or, as we call them, ‘comic hops.’ He throws his legs about and makes faces, and he dresses as a clown.

“When it’s not too windy, we do the perch. We carry a long fir pole about with us, twenty-four feet long, and Jim the strong man, as they calls me, that is I, holds the pole up at the bottom. The one that runs up is called the sprite. It’s the bottom man that holds the pole that has the dangerous work in la perche. He’s got all to look to. Anybody, who has got any courage, can run up the pole; but I have to guide and balance it; and the pole weighs some 20 lbs., and the man about 8 stone. When it’s windy, it’s very awkward, and I have to walk about to keep him steady and balance him; but I’m never frightened, I know it so well. The man who runs up it does such feats as these; for instance, ‘the bottle position,’ that is only holding by his feet, with his two arms extended; and then ‘the hanging down by one toe,’ with only one foot on the top of the pole, and hanging down with his arms out, swimming on the top on his belly; and ‘the horizontal,’ as it is called, or supporting the body out sideways by the strength of the arms, and such-like, winding up with coming down head fust.

“The pole is fixed very tightly in a socket in my waistband, and it takes two men to pull it out, for it gets jammed in with his force on a-top of it. The danger is more with the bottom one than the one a-top, though few people would think so. You see, if he falls off, he is sure to light on his feet like a cat; for we’re taught to this trick; and a man can jump off a place thirty feet high, without hurting himself, easy. Now if the people was to go frontwards, it would be all up with me, because with the leverage and its being fixed so tight to my stomach, there’s no help for it, for it would be sure to rip me up and tear out my entrails. I have to keep my eyes about me, for if it goes too fur, I could never regain the balance again. But it’s easy enough when you’re accustomed to it.

“The one that goes up the pole can always see into the drawing-rooms, and he’ll tell us where it’s good to go and get any money, for he can see the people peeping behind the curtains; and they generally give when they find they are discovered. It’s part of his work to glance his eyes about him, and then he calls out whilst he is up, ‘to the right,’ or ‘the left,’ as it may be; and although the crowd don’t understand him, we do.

“Our gang generally prefer performing in the West-end, because there’s more ‘calls’ there. Gentlemen looking out of window see us, and call to us to stop and perform; but we don’t trust to them, even, but make a collection when the performance is half over; and if it’s good we continue, and make two or three collections during the exhibition. What we consider a good collection is 7s. or 8s.; and for that we do the whole performance. And besides, we get what we call ‘ringings’ afterwards; that’s halfpence that are thrown into the ring. Sometimes we get 10s. altogether, and sometimes more and sometimes less; though it’s a very poor pitch if it’s not up to 5s. I’m talking of a big pitch, when we go through all our ‘slang,’ as we say. But then we have our little pitches, which don’t last more than a quarter of an hour—our flying pitches, as we call them, and for them 5s. is an out-and-outer, and we are well contented if we get half-a-crown. We usually reckon about twenty pitches a-day, that’s eight before dinner and twelve after. It depends greatly upon the holidays as to what we makes in the days. If there’s any fairs or feasts going on we do better. There’s two days in the week we reckon nothing, that’s Friday and Saturday. Friday’s little good all day long, and Saturday’s only good after six o’clock, when wages have been paid. My share may on the average come to this:—Monday, about 7s. or 8s., and the same for Tuesday. Then Wednesday and Thursday it falls off again, perhaps 3s. or 4s.; and Friday ain’t worth much; no more is Saturday. We used to go to Sydenham on Saturdays, and we would find the gents there; but now it’s getting too late, and the price to the Palace is only 2s. 6d., when it used to be 5s., and that makes a wonderful difference to us. And yet we like the poor people better than the rich, for it’s the half-pence that tells up best. Perhaps we might take a half-sovereign, but it’s very rare, and since 1853 I don’t remember taking more than twenty of them. There was a Princess—I’m sure I’ve forgotten her name, but she was German, and she used to live in Grosvenor-square—she used to give us half-a-sovereign every Monday during three months she was in London. The servants was ordered to tell us to come every Monday at three o’clock, and we always did; and even though there was nobody looking, we used to play all the same; and as soon as the drum ceased playing, there was the money brought out to us. We continued playing to her till we was told she had gone away. We have also had sovereign calls. When my gang was in the Isle of Wight, Lord Y—— has often give us a sovereign, and plenty to eat and drink as well.

“I can’t say but what it’s as good as a hundred a-year to me; but I can’t say, it’s the same with all posturers: for you see I can talk French, and if there’s any foreigners in the crowd I can talk to them, and they are sure to give something. But most posturers make a good living, and if they look out for it, there are few but make 30s. a-week.

“Posturing as it is called (some people call it contortionists, that’s a new name; a Chinese nondescript—that’s the first name it came out as, although what we calls posturing is a man as can sit upon nothing; as, for instance, when he’s on the back of two chairs and does a split with his legs stretched out and sitting on nothing like)—posturing is reckoned the healthiest life there is, because we never get the rheumatics; and another thing, we always eat hearty. We often put on wet dresses, such as at a fair, when they’ve been washed out clean, and we put them on before they’re dry, and that’s what gives the rheumatism; but we are always in such a perspiration that it never affects us. It’s very violent exercise, and at night we feels it in our thighs more than anywhere, so that if it’s damp or cold weather it hurts us to sit down. If it’s wet weather, or showery, we usually get up stiff in the morning, and then we have to ‘crick’ each other before we go out, and practise in our bed-rooms. On the Sunday we also go out and practise, either in a field, or at the ‘Tan’ in Bermondsey. We used to go to the ‘Hops’ in Maiden-lane, but that’s done away with now.

“When we go out performing, we always take our dresses out with us, and we have our regular houses appointed, according to what part of the town we play in, if in London; and we have one pint of beer a man, and put on our costume, and leave our clothes behind us. Every morning we put on a clean dress, so we are obliged to have two of them, and whilst we are wearing one the other is being washed. Some of our men is married, and their wives wash for them, but them as isn’t give the dress to anybody who wants a job.

“Accidents are very rare with posturers. We often put our hip-bone out, but that’s soon put right again, and we are at work in a week. All our bones are loose like, and we can pull one another in, without having no pullies. One of my gang broke his leg at Chatham race-course, through the grass being slippery, and he was pitched down from three high; but we paid him his share, just the same as if he was out with us;—it wouldn’t do if we didn’t, as a person wouldn’t mount in bad weather. That man is getting on nicely,—he walks with a crutch though,—but he’ll be right in another month, and then he’ll only be put to light work till he’s strong. He ought not to be walking out yet, but he’s so daring there’s no restraining him. I, too, once broke my arm. I am a hand-jumper; that is, I a’most always light on my hands when I jump. I was on a chair on a top of a table, and I had to get into the chair and do what we call the frog, and jump off it, coming down on my hands. Everything depends upon how you hold your arms, and I was careless, and didn’t pay attention, and my arm snapped just below the elbow. I couldn’t work for three months. I was at Beauvais, in France, at the time, but the circus I was with supported me.

“My father’s very near seventy-six, and he has been a tumbler for fifty years; my children are staying with him, and he’s angry that I won’t bring them up to it: but I want them to be some trade or another, because I don’t like the life for them. There’s so much suffering before they begin tumbling, and then there’s great temptation to drink, and such-like. I’d sooner send them to school, than let them get their living out of the streets. I’ve one boy and two girls. They’re always at it at home, indeed; father and my sister-in-law say they can’t keep them from it. The boy’s very nimble.

“In the winter time we generally goes to the theatres. We are a’most always engaged for the pantomimes, to do the sprites. We always reckon it a good thirteen-weeks’ job, but in the country it’s only a month. If we don’t apply for the job they come after us. The sprites in a pantomime is quite a new style, and we are the only chaps that can do it,—the posturers and tumblers. In some theatres they find the dresses. Last winter I was at Liverpool, and wore a green dress, spangled all over, which belonged to Mr. Copeland, the manager. We never speak in the play, but just merely rush on, and throw somersaults, and frogs, and such-like, and then rush off again. Little Wheeler, the greatest tumbler of the day, was a posturer in the streets, and now he’s in France doing his 10l. a-week, engaged for three years.”

There is but one person in London who goes about the street doing what is termed “The Risley performance,” and even he is rarely to be met with.

Of all the street professionals whom I have seen, this man certainly bears off the palm for respectability of attire. He wore, when he came to me, a brown Chesterfield coat and black continuations, and but for the length of his hair, the immense size of his limbs, and the peculiar neatness of his movements, it would have been impossible to have recognized in him any of those characteristics which usually distinguish the street performer. He had a chest which, when he chose, he could force out almost like a pouter pigeon. The upper part of his body was broad and weighty-looking. He asked me to feel the muscle of his arm, and doubling it up, a huge lump rose, almost as if he had a cocoa-nut under his sleeve; in fact, it seemed as fully developed as the gilt arms placed as signs over the gold-beaters’ shops.

Like most of the street professionals, he volunteered to exhibit before me some of his feats of strength and agility. He threw his head back (his long hair tossing about like an Indian fly-whisk) until his head touched his heels, and there he stood bent backward, and nearly double, like a strip of whalebone. Then he promenaded round the room, walking on his hands, his coat-tails falling about his shoulders, and making a rare jingle of half-pence the while, and his legs dangling in front of him as limp as the lash of a cart-whip. I refused to allow him to experiment upon me, and politely declined his obliging offer to raise me from the ground, “and hold me at arm’s-length like a babby.”

When he spoke of his parents, and the brothers who performed with him, he did so in most affectionate terms, and his descriptions of the struggles he had gone through in his fixed determination to be a tumbler, and how he had worked to gain his parents’ consent, had a peculiarly sorrowful touch about them, as if he still blamed himself for the pain he had caused them. Farther, whenever he mentioned his little brothers, he always stopped for two or three minutes to explain to me that they were the cleverest lads in London, and as true and kind-hearted as they were talented.

He was more minute in his account of himself than my space will permit him to be; for as he said, “he had a wonderful rememoryation, and could recollect anything.”

With the omission of a few interesting details, the following is the account of the poor fellow’s life:—

“My professional name is Signor Nelsonio, but my real one is Nelson, and my companions know me as ‘Leu,’ which is short for Lewis. I can do plenty of things beside the Risley business, for it forms only one part of my entertainment. I am a strong man, and a fire-king, and a stone-breaker by the fist, as well as being sprite, and posturer, and doing ‘la perche.’

“Last Christmas (1855) I was, along with my two brothers, engaged at the Theatre Royal, Cheltenham, to do the sprites in the pantomime. I have brought the bill of the performances with me to show it you. Here you see the pantomime is called ‘THE IMP OF THE NORTH, or The Golden Bason; and Harlequin and the Miller’s Daughter.’ In the pantomimical transformations it says, ‘SPRITES—by the Nelson Family:’ that’s me and my two brothers.

“The reason why I took to the Risley business was this. When I was a boy of seven I went to school, and my father and mother would make me go; but, unfortunately, I was stubborn, and would not. I said I wanted to do some work. ‘Well,’ said they, ‘you shan’t do any work not yet, till you’re thirteen years old, and you shall go to school.’ Says I, ‘I will do work.’ Well, I wouldn’t; so I plays the truant. Then I goes to amuse myself, and I goes to Haggerstone-fields in the Hackney-road, and then I see some boys learning to tumble on some dung there. So I began to do it too, and I very soon picked up two or three tricks. There was a man who was in the profession as tumbler and acrobat, who came there to practise his feats, and he see me tumbling, and says he, ‘My lad, will you come along with me, and do the Risley business, and I’ll buy you your clothes, and give you a shilling a-week besides?’ I told him that perhaps mother and father wouldn’t let me go; but says he, ‘O, yes they will.’ So he comes to our house; and says mother, ‘What do you want along with my boy?’ and he says, ‘I want to make a tumbler of him.’ But she wouldn’t.

“My father is a tailor, but my uncle and all the family was good singers. My uncle was leader of the Drury-lane band, and Miss Nelson, who came out there, is my cousin. They are out in Australia now, doing very well, giving concerts day and night, and clearing by both performances one hundred and fifty pounds, day and night (and sooner, more than less), as advertised in the paper which they sent to us.

“One day, instead of going to school, I went along with this man into the streets, and then he did the Risley business, throwing me about on his hands and feet. I was about thirteen years old then. Mother asked me at night where I had been, and when I said I had been at school, she went and asked the master and found me out. Then I brought home some dresses once, and she tore them up, so I was forced to drop going out in the streets. I made some more dresses, and she tore those up. Then I got chucking about, à la Risley, my little brother, who was about seven years old; and says mother, ‘Let that boy alone, you’ll break his neck.’ ‘No, I shan’t,’ say I, and I kept on doing till I had learnt him the tricks.

“One Saturday night, father and mother and my eldest brother went to a concert-room. I had no money, so I couldn’t go. I asked my little brother to go along with me round some tap-rooms, exhibiting with me. So I smuggled him out, telling him I’d give him lots of cakes; and away we went, and we got about seven shillings and sixpence. I got home before father and mother come home. When they returned, father says, ‘Where have you been?’ Then I showed the money we had got; he was regular astonished, and says he ‘How is this? you can do nothing, you ain’t clever!’ I says, ‘Oh, ain’t I? and it’s all my own learning:’ so then he told me, that since he couldn’t do nothing else with me, I should take to it as my profession, and stick to it.

“Soon after I met my old friend the swallower again, in Ratcliffe highway. I was along with my little brother, and both dressed up in tights and spangled trunks. Says he, ‘Oh, you will take to tumbling will you? Well, then, come along with me, and we’ll go in the country.’ Then he took us down to Norwich (to Yarmouth); then he beat me, and would give me no clothes or money, for he spent it to go and get drunk. We not sending any money home, mother began to wonder what had become of me; so one night, when this man was out with a lot of girls getting drunk, I slipt away, and walked thirty miles that night, and then I began performing at different public-houses, and so worked my way till I got back to London again. My little brother was along with me, but I carried him on my shoulders. One day it came on to rain awful, and we had run away in our dresses, and then we was dripping. I was frightened to see little Johnny so wet, and thought he’d be ill. There was no shed or barn or nothing, and only the country road, so I tore on till we came to a roadside inn, and then I wrung his clothes out, and I only had fourpence in my pocket, and I ordered some rum and water hot, and made him drink. ‘Drink it, it’ll keep the cold out of you.’ When we got out he was quite giddy, and kept saying, ‘Oh, I’m so wet!’ With all these misfortunes I walked, carrying the little chap across my shoulders. One day I only had a halfpenny, and Johnny was crying for hunger, so I goes to a fellow in a orchard and say I, ‘Can you make me a ha’path of apples?’ He would take the money, but he gave a cap-full of fallings. I’ve walked thirty-eight miles in one day carrying him, and I was awfully tired. On that same day, when we got to Colchester, we put up at the Blue Anchor, and I put Johnny into bed, and I went out myself and went the round of the public-houses. My feet was blistered, but I had my light tumbling slippers on, and I went to work and got sixteen pence-halfpenny. This got us bread and cheese for supper and breakfast, and paid threepence each for the bed; and the next day we went on and performed in a village and got three shillings. Then, at Chelmsford we got eight shillings. I bought Johnny some clothes, for he had only his tights and little trunks, and though it was summer he was cold, especially after rain. The nearer we got to London the better we got off, for they give us then plenty to eat and drink, and we did pretty well for money. After I passed Chelmsford I never was hungry again. When we got to Romford, I waited two days till it was market-day, when we performed before the country people and got plenty of money and beer; but I never cared for the beer. We took four shillings and sixpence. I wouldn’t let Johnny take any beer, for I’m fond of him, and he’s eleven now, and the cleverest little fellow in England; and I learnt him everything he knows out of my own head, for he never had no master. We took the train to London from Romford (one shilling and sixpence each), and then we went home.

“When we got back, mother and father said they knew how it would be, and laughed at us. They wanted to keep us at home, but I wouldn’t, and they was forced to give way. In London I stopped still for a long time, at last got an engagement at two shillings a-night at a penny gaff in Shoreditch. It was Sambo, a black man, what went about the streets along with the Demon Brothers—acrobats—that got me the engagement.

“One night father and mother came to see me, and they was frightened to see me chucking my brother about; and she calls out, ‘Oh, don’t do that! you’ll break his back.’ The people kept hollaring out, ‘Turn that woman out!’ but she answers, ‘They are my sons—stop ’em!’ When I bent myself back’ards she calls out, ‘Lord! mind your bones.’

“After this I noticed that my other brother, Sam, was a capital hand at jumping over the chairs and tables. He was as active as a monkey; indeed he plays monkeys now at the different ballets that comes out at the chief theatres. It struck me he would make a good tumbler, and sure enough he is a good one. I asked him, and he said he should; and then he see me perform, and he declared he would be one. He was at my uncle’s then, as a carver and gilder. When I told father, says he, ‘Let ’em do as they like, they’ll get on.’ I said to him one day, ‘Sam, let’s see what you’re like:’ so I stuck him up in his chair, and stuck his legs behind his head, and kept him like that for five minutes. His limbs bent beautiful, and he didn’t want no cricking.

“I should tell you, that before that he done this here. You’ve heard of Baker, the red man, as was performing at the City of London Theatre; well, Sam see the cut of him sitting in a chair with his legs folded, just like you fold your arms. So Sam pulls down one of the bills with the drawing on it, and he says, ‘I can do that,’ and he goes home and practises from the engraving till he was perfect. Then he showed me, and says I, ‘That’s the style! it’s beautiful! you’ll do.’

“Then we had two days’ practice together, and we worked the double-tricks together. Then, I learned him style and grace, what I knowed myself; such as coming before an audience and making the obedience; and by and by says I to him, ‘We’ll come out at a theatre, and make a good bit of money.’

“Well, we went to another exhibition, and we came out all three together, and our salary was twenty-five shillings a-week, and we was very successful. Then we got outside Peter’s Theatre at Stepney fair, the last as ever was, for it’s done away with now; we did very well then; they give us twelve shillings a-day between us for three days. We did the acrobating and Risley business outside the parade, and inside as well. Sam got on wonderful, for his mind was up to it, and he liked the work. I and my brothers can do as well as any one in this business, I don’t care who comes before us. I can do upwards of one hundred and twenty-one different tricks in tumbling, when I’m along with those little fellows. We can do the hoops and glasses—putting a glass of beer on my forehead, and going through hoops double, and lying down and getting up again without spilling it. Then there’s the bottle-sprite, and the short stilts, and globe running and globe dancing, and chair tricks; perform with the chairs; and the pole trick—la perche—with two boys, not one mind you.

“We’ve been continuing ever since at this Risley business. I lay down on a carpet, and throw then summersets from feet to feet. I tell you what the music plays to it,—it’s the railway overtime, and it begins now and then quicker and quicker, till I throw them fast as lightning. Sam does about fifty-four or fifty-five of these summersets one after another, and Johny does about twenty-five, because he’s littler. Then there’s standing upright, and stand ’em one in one hand and one on the other. Then I throws them up in summersets, and catch ’em on my palm, and then I chuck ’em on the ground.

“The art with me lying on the ground is that it takes the strength, and the sight to see that I catch ’em properly; for if I missed, they might break their necks. The audience fancies that it’s most with them tumbling, but every thing depends upon me catching them properly. Every time they jump, I have to give ’em a jerk, and turn ’em properly. It’s almost as much work as if I was doing it myself. When they learn at first, they do it on a soft ground, so as not to hurt theirselves. It don’t make the blood come to the head lying down so long on my back—only at first.

“I’ve done the Risley business first at penny exhibitions, and after that I went to fairs; then I went round the country with a booth—a man named Manly it was; but we dropped that, ’cos my little brother was knocked up, for it was too hard work for the little fellow building up and taking down the booth sometimes twice in a-day, and then going off twenty miles further on to another fair, and building up again the next day. Then we went pitching about in the main streets of the towns in the country. Then I always had a drum and pipes. As soon as a crowd collected I’d say, ‘Gentlemen, I’m from the principal theatres in London, and before I begin I must have five shillings in the ring.’ Then we’d do some, and after that, when half was over, I’d say, ‘Now, gentlemen, the better part is to come, and if you make it worth my while, I go on with this here entertainment;’ then, perhaps, they’d give me two shillings more. I’ve done bad and done good in the country. In one day I’ve taken two pounds five shillings, and many days we’ve not taken eight shillings, and there was four of us, me and my two brothers and the drummer, who had two-and-sixpence a-day, and a pot of beer besides. Take one week with another we took regular two pounds five shillings, and out of that I’d send from twenty to thirty shillings a-week home to my parents. Oh, I’ve been very good to my parents, and I’ve never missed it. I’ve been a wild boy too, and yet I’ve always taken care of father and mother. They’ve had twelve in family and never a stain on their character, nor never a key turned on them, but are upright and honourable people.

“At a place called Brenford in Norfolk—where there’s such a lot of wild rabbits—we done so well, that we took a room and had bills printed and put out. We charged threepence each, and the room was crowded, for we shared twenty-five shillings between us. When the people see’d me and my brothers come on dressed all in red, and tumble about, they actually swore we were devils, and rushed out of the place; so that, though there was a room full, there was only two stopped to see the performances. One old man called out, ‘O wenches’—they call their wives wenches—‘come out, they be devils.’ We came out with red faces and horns and red dresses, and away they went screaming. There was one woman trampled on and a child knocked out of her arms. In some of these country towns they’re shocking strict, and never having seen anything of the kind, they’re scared directly.

“About six months ago I went to Woolwich with the boys, and there was a chap that wanted to fight me, because I wouldn’t go along with him. So, I says, ‘We won’t have no fighting;’ so I went along with him to Gravesend, and then we asked permission of the mayor, ’cos in country towns we often have to ask the mayor to let us go performing in the streets. There we done very well, taking twenty-five shillings in the day. Then we worked up by Chatham, and down to Herne-bay, and Ramsgate; and at Ramsgate we stopped a week, doing uncommon well on the sands, for the people on the chairs would give sixpence and a shilling, and say it was very clever, and too clever to be in the streets. We did Margate next, and then Deal, and on to Dover by the boat. At Dover, the mayor wouldn’t let us perform, and said if he catched us in the streets he’d have us took up. We were very hard up. So I said to Sam, ‘You must go out one way and I and Johnny the other, and busk in the public-house.’ Sam got eight shillings and sixpence and I four shillings. But I had a row with a sailor, and I was bruised and had to lay up. When I was better we moved to Folkestone. There was the German soldiers there, and we did very well. I went out one day with our carpet to a village close by, and some German officers made us perform, and gave us five shillings, and then we went the round of the beer-shops, and altogether we cleared five pounds before we finished that day. We also went up to the camp, where the tents was, and I asked the colonel to let me perform before the men, and he said, ‘Well it ain’t usual, but you may if you like.’ The officers we found was so pleased they kept on giving us two-shilling pieces, and besides we had a lot of foreign coin, which we sold to a jeweller for ten shillings.

“I worked my way on to Canterbury and Winchester, and then, by a deal of persuasion I got permission to perform in the back-streets, and we done very well. Then we went on to Southampton. There was a cattle fair, on—Celsey fair is, I think, the name of it; and then I joined another troupe of tumblers, and we worked the fair, and after that went on to Southampton; and when we began working on the Monday, there was another troupe working as well. After we had pitched once or twice, this other troupe came and pitched opposition against us. I couldn’t believe it at first, but when I see which was their lay, then says I, ‘Now I’ll settle this.’ We was here, as it was, and they came right on to us—there, as it may be. So it was our dinner-time, and we broke up and went off. After dinner we came out again, and pitched the carpet in a square, and they came close to us again, and as soon as they struck up, the people run away to see the new ones. So I said ‘I don’t want to injure them, but they shan’t injure us.’ So I walked right into the middle of their ring, and threw down the carpet, and says I, ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, the best performance is the one that deserves best support, and I’ll show you what I can do.’ I went to work with the boys, and was two hours doing all my tumbling tricks. They was regularly stunned. The silver and the halfpence covered the carpet right over, as much as it would hold. I think there was three pounds. Then I says, ‘Now you’ve seen the tumbling, now see the perche.’ They had a perche, too; it was taller than mine; but, as I told them, it was because I couldn’t get no higher a one. So I went to work again, and cries I, ‘Now, both boys up;’ though I had only stood one on up to that time, and had never tried two of ’em. Up they goes, and the first time they come over, but never hurt theirselves. It was new to me, you see. ‘Up again, lads,’ says I; and up they goes, and did it beautiful. The people regular applauded, like at a theatre. Down came the money in a shower, and one gentleman took his hat round, and went collecting for us. Says I to this other school, ‘You tried to injure us, and what have you got by it? I beat you in tumbling, and if you can match the perche, do it.’ Then they says, ‘We didn’t try to injure you; come and drink a gallon of beer.’ So off we went, and the police told ’em to choose their side of the town and we would take ours. That settled the opposition, and we both done well.

“I’ve done the Risley in the streets of London, more so than at theatres and concerts. The stone paving don’t hurt so much as you would think to lie down. We don’t do it when it’s muddy. The boys finds no difference whatsumever in springing off the stones. It pays very well at times, you know; but we don’t like to do it often, because afterwards they don’t like to appreciate you in concerts and theatres, and likewise penny exhibitions.

“My brother Sam can jump like a frog, on his hands, through his legs, out of a one-pair window; and little Johnny throws out of a one-pair-of-stairs window a back summerset.

“It’s astonishing how free the bones get by practice. My brother Sam can dislocate his limbs and replace them again; and when sleeping in bed, I very often find him lying with his legs behind his neck. It’s quite accidental, and done without knowing, and comes natural to him, from being always tumbling. Myself, I often in my dreams often frighten my wife by starting up and half throwing a summersault, fancying I’m at the theatre, and likewise I often lie with my heels against my head.

“We are the only family or persons going about the streets doing the Risley. I’ve travelled all through England, Scotland, and Wales, and I don’t know anybody but ourselves. When we perform in the London theatres, which we do when we can get an engagement, we get six or seven pounds a-week between us. We’ve appeared at the Pavilion two seasons running; likewise at the City of London, and the Standard, and also all the cheap concerts in London. Then we are called ‘The Sprites’ by the Nelson family will appear; or, ‘The Sprites of Jupiter;’ or, ‘Sons of Cerea;’ or, ‘Air-climbers of Arabia!’

“Taking all the year round, I dare say my income comes to about thirty-five shillings or two pounds, and out of that I have to find dresses.”

“I have been in the profession for about thirteen years, and I am thirty-two next birthday. Excepting four years that I was at sea, I’ve been solely by the profession. I’m what is termed a strong man, and perform feats of strength and posturing. What is meant by posturing is the distortion of the limbs, such as doing the splits, and putting your leg over your head and pulling it down your back, a skipping over your leg, and such-like business. Tumbling is different from posturing, and means throwing summersets and walking on your hands; and acrobating means the two together, with mounting three stories high, and balancing each other. These are the definitions I make.

“I was nineteen before I did anything of any note at all, and got what I call a living salary. Long before that I had been trying the business, going in and out of these free concerts, and trying my hand at it, fancying I was very clever, but disgusting the audience, for they are mostly duffers at these free concerts; which is clearly the case, for they only do it for a pint every now and then, and depend upon passing the hat round after their performance. I never got much at collections, so I must have been a duffer.

“My father is an architect and builder, and his income now is never less than a thousand a-year. Like a fool, I wouldn’t go into his office: I wish I had. I preferred going to sea. I was always hankering after first one vessel and then another. I used to be fond of going down to the docks, and such-like, and looking at the vessels. I’d talk with the sailors about foreign countries, and such-like, and my ambition was to be a sailor. I was the scabby sheep of the family, and I’ve been punished for it. I never went into the governor’s office; but when I was about fourteen I was put to a stonemason, for I thought I should like to be a carver, or something of that sort. I was two years there, and I should have done very well if I had stayed, for I earned a guinea a-week when I left.

“Before I went to the stonemason I was at the Victoria, taking checks—when there was any. I had an uncle there who kept the saloon there. I was always very partial to going to the theatre, for all our people are chapel people, and that I never liked. My father’s parlour is always smothered with ministers, and mine with tumblers, and that’s the difference. I used to go and see my uncle at the Vic., so as to get to the theatre for nothing. I wasn’t paid for taking the checks, but I knew the check-taker, and he’d ask me to help him, and I was too glad to get inside a theatre to refuse the job. They were doing dreadful business. It was under Levi, and before Glossop’s time. It was before the glass curtain come out. The glass curtain was a splendid thing. It went straight up, never wound. You can even now see where the roof was highered to receive it. Levi has got the Garrick now. They say he’s not doing much.

“The first thing I did was at a little beer-shop, corner of Southwark-bridge-road and Union-street. I had seen Herbert do the Grecian statues at the Vic., in ‘Hercules, King of Clubs,’ and it struck me I could do ’em. So I knew this beer-shop, and I bought half-a-crown’s worth of tickets to be allowed to do these statues. It was on a boxing-night, I remember. I did them, but they were dreadful bad. The people did certainly applaud, but what for, I don’t know, for I kept shaking and wabbling so, that my marble statue was rather ricketty; and there was a strong man in the room, who had been performing them, and he came up to me and said that I was a complete duffer, and that I knew nothing about it at all. So I replied, that he knew nothing about his feats of strength, and that I’d go and beat him. So I set to work at it; for I was determined to lick him. I got five quarter-of-hundred weights, and used to practice throwing them at a friend’s back-yard in the Waterloo-road. I used to make myself all over mud at it, besides having a knock of the head sometimes. At last I got perfect chucking the quarter hundred, and then I tied a fourteen pound weight on to them, and at last I got up half-hundreds. I learnt to hold up one of them at arm’s length, and even then I was obliged to push it up with the other hand. I also threw them over my head, as well as catching them by the ring.

“I went to this beer-shop as soon as I could do, and came out. I wasn’t so good as he was at lifting, but that was all he could do; and I did posturing with the weights as well, and that licked him. He was awfully jealous, and I had been revenged. I had learnt to do a split, holding a half-hundred in my teeth, and rising with it, without touching the ground with my hands. Now I can lift five, for I’ve had more practice. I had tremendous success at this beer-shop.

“It hurt me awfully when I learnt to do the split with the weight on my teeth. It strained me all to pieces. I couldn’t put my heels to the ground not nicely, for it physicked my thighs dreadful. When I was hot I didn’t feel it; but as I cooled, I was cramped all to bits. It took me nine months before I could do it without feeling any pain.

“Another thing I learnt to do at this beer-shop was, to break the stone on the chest. This man used to do it as well, only in a very slight way—with thin bits and a cobbler’s hammer. Now mine is regular flagstones. I’ve seen as many as twenty women faint seeing me do it. At this beer-shop, when I first did it, the stone weighed about three quarters of a hundred, and was an inch thick. I laid down on the ground, and the stone was put on my chest, and a man with a sledge hammer, twenty-eight pounds weight, struck it and smashed it. The way it is done is this. You rest on your heels and hands and throw your chest up. There you are, like a stool, with the weight on you. When you see the blow coming, you have to give, or it would knock you all to bits.

“When I was learning to do this, I practised for nine months. I got a friend of mine to hit the stone. One day I cut my chest open doing it. I wasn’t paying attention to the stone, and never noticed that it was hollow; so then when the blow came down, the sharp edges of the stone, from my having nothing but a fleshing suit on, cut right into the flesh, and made two deep incisions. I had to leave it off for about a month. Strange to say, this stone-breaking never hurt my chest or my breathing; I rather think it has done me good, for I’m strong and hearty, and never have illness of any sort.

“The first time I done it I was dreadful frightened. I knew if I didn’t stop still I should have my brains knocked out, pretty well. When I saw the blow coming I trembled a good bit, but I kept still as I was able. It was a hard blow, for it broke the bit of Yorkshire paving, about an inch thick, into about sixty pieces.

“I got very hard up whilst I was performing at this beer-shop. I had run away from home, and the performances were only two nights a-week, and brought me in about six shillings. I wasn’t engaged anywhere else. One night, a Mr. Emanuel, who had a benefit at the Salmon Saloon, Union-street, asked me to appear at his benefit. He had never seen me, but only heard of my performances. I agreed to go, and he got out the bills, and christened me Signor C——; and he had drawings made of the most extravagant kind, with me holding my arms out with about ten fifty-six-pound weights hanging to them by the rings. He had the weights, hammers, and a tremendous big stone chained outside the door, and there used to be mobs of people there all day long looking at it.

“This was the first success I made. Mr. Emanuel gave five shillings for the stone, and had it brought up to the saloon by two horses in a cart to make a sensation. It weighed from four to five hundred weight. I think I had such a thing as five men to lift it up for me.

“I had forgotten all about this engagement, and I was at the coffee-house where I lodged. The fact was, I was in rags, and so shabby I didn’t like to go, and if he hadn’t come to fetch me I should not have gone. He drove up in his chaise on the night in question to this coffee-shop, and he says, ‘Signor C——, make haste; go and change your clothes, and come along.’ I didn’t know at first he was speaking to me, for it was the first time I had been Signor C——. Then I told him I had got my best suit on, though it was very ragged, and no mistake about it, for I remember there was a good hole at each elbow. He seemed astonished, and at last proposed that I should wear his great-coat; but I wouldn’t, because, as I told him, his coat would be as well known at the saloon as he himself was, and that it didn’t suit me to be seen in another’s clothes. So he took me just as I was. When we got there, the landlady was regularly flabbergastered to see a ragged fellow like me come to be star of the night. She’d hardly speak to me.

“There was a tremendous house, and they had turned above a hundred away. When I got into the saloon, Emanuel says, ‘What’ll you have to drink?’ I said, ‘Some brandy;’ but my landlord of the coffee-house, who had come unbeknown to me, he grumbles out, ‘Ask him what he’ll have to eat, for he’s had nothing since the slice of bread-and-butter for breakfast.’ I trod on his toe, and says, ‘Keep quiet, you fool!’ Emanuel behaved like a regular brick, and no mistake. He paid for the supper and everything. I was regularly ashamed when the landlord let it out though. That supper put life into me, for it almost had the same effect upon me as drink.

“It soon got whispered about in the saloon that I was the strong man, and everybody got handing me their glasses; so I was regularly tipsy when it was time to go on, and they had put me off to the last on purpose to draw the people and keep them there drinking.

“I had a regular success. When the women saw the five men put the stone on my chest, they all of them called out, ‘Don’t! don’t!’ It was a block like a curb, about a foot thick, and about a four feet six inches long. I went with Emanuel to buy it. I had never tried such a big one before. It didn’t feel so heavy on the chest, for, you see, you’ve got such out-and-out good support on your hands and heels. I’ve actually seen one man raise a stone and another a waggon. It’s the purchase done it. I’ve lifted up a cart-horse right off his legs.

“The stone broke after six blows with a twenty-eight pound sledge-hammer. Then you should have heard the applause. I thought it would never give over. It smashed all to atoms, just like glass, and there was the people taking away the bits to keep as a remembrance.

“As I went out the landlady asked me to have a bottle of soda-water. The landlady was frightened, and told me she had felt sure I should be killed. I was the second that ever done stone-breaking in England or abroad, and I’m the first that ever did such a big one. The landlady was so alarmed that she wouldn’t engage me, for she said I must be killed one of the nights. Her behaviour was rather different as I went out to when I came in.

“I, of course, didn’t go on in my rags. I had a first-rate stage dress.

“After this grand appearance I got engaged at Gravesend fair by Middleton, and there I had eight shillings a-day, and I stopped with him three weeks over the fair. I used to do my performances outside on the parade, never inside. I had to do the stone-breaking about nine or ten times a-day. They were middling stones, some larger and some smaller, and the smaller ones about half-a-hundred weight, I suppose. Any man might bring his stone and hammer, and break it himself. The one who struck was generally chosen from the crowd; the biggest chap they could find. I’ve heard ’em say to me, ‘Now, old chap, I’ll smash you all to bits; so look out!’ The fact is, the harder they strike the better for me, for it smashes it at once, and don’t keep the people in suspense.

“It was at Gravesend that I met with my second and last accident. With the cutting of the chest, it is the only one I ever had. The feller who came up to break the stone was half tipsy and missed his aim, and obliged me by hitting my finger instead of the stone. I said to him, ‘Mind what you are doing,’ but I popped my hand behind me, and when I got up I couldn’t make out what the people was crying out about, till I looked round at my back and then I was smothered in blood. Middleton said, ‘Good God! what’s the matter?’ and I told him I was hit on the finger. When the cry was given of ‘All in to begin,’ I went into a booth close by and had some brandy, and got a doctor to strap up the finger, and then I went on with the parade business just the same. It didn’t pain me nothing like what I should have thought. It was too hard a knock to pain me much. The only time I felt it was when the doctor dressed it, for it gave me pepper taking the plaster off.

“I was at Gravesend some time, and I went to work again stone-masoning, and I had a guinea a-week, and in the evening I used to perform at the Rose Inn. I did just as I liked there. I never charged ’em anything. I lived in the house and they never charged me anything. It was a first-rate house. If I wanted five shillings I’d get it from the landlord. I was there about eleven months, and all that time I lived there and paid nothing. I had a benefit there, and they wouldn’t even charge me for printing the bills, or cards, or anything. It was quite a clear benefit, and every penny taken at the doors was given to me. I charged a shilling admittance, and the room was crowded, and they was even on the stairs standing tip-toe to look at me. I wanted some weights, and asked a butcher to lend ’em to me, and he says, ‘Lend ’em to you! aye, take the machine and all if it’ll serve you.’ I was a great favourite, as you may guess.

“After Gravesend I came up to London, and went and played the monkey at the Bower Saloon. It was the first time I had done it. There was all the monkey business, jumping over tables and chairs, and all mischievous things; and there was climbing up trees, and up two perpendicular ropes. I was dressed in a monkey’s dress; it’s made of some of their hearth-rugs; and my face was painted. It’s very difficult to paint a monkey’s face. I’ve a great knack that way, and can always manage anything of that sort.

“From the Bower I went on to Portsmouth. I’d got hard up again, for I’d been idle for three months, for I couldn’t get any money, and I never appear under price. I walked all the way to Portsmouth, carrying a half-hundred weight, besides my dress, all the way; I played at the tap-rooms on the road. I did pretty middling, earned my living on the road, about two shillings a-day. When I got to Portsmouth I did get a job, and a good job it was, only one shilling and sixpence a-night; but I thought it better to do that than nothing. I only did comic singing, and I only knew two songs, but I set to and learnt a lot. I am very courageous, and if I can’t get my money one way, I will another. With us, if you’ve got a shilling, you’re a fool if you spend that before you have another. I stopped at this public-house for two months, and then a man who came from Portsea, a town close by, came one night, and he asked me what I was doing. He had heard of what I could do, and he offered me two pounds a-week to go with him and do the strong business. He kept the Star Inn at Portsea. I stopped there such a thing as two years, and I did well. I had great success, for the place was cramm’d every night. For my benefit, Major Wyatt and Captain Holloway gave me their bespeak, and permission for the men to come. The admission was sixpence. Half the regiment marched down, and there was no room for the public. I was on the stage for two hours during my performances. I was tired, and fainted away as dead as a hammer after the curtain fell.

“Among other things I announced that I should, whilst suspended from the ceiling, lift a horse. I had this horse paraded about the town for a week before my night. There was such a house that numbers of people was turned away, and a comic singer who was performing at a house opposite, he put out an announcement that he too would lift a horse, and when the time came he brought on a clothes-horse.

“The way I did the horse was this: I was hanging by my ankles, and the horse was on a kind of platform under me. I had two sheets rolled up and tied round the horse like belly-bands, and then I passed my arms through them and strained him up. I didn’t keep him long in the air, only just lifted him off his legs. In the midst of it the bandage got off his eyes, and then, what with the music and the applauding, the poor brute got frightened and begun plunging. I couldn’t manage him at all whilst he was kicking. He got his two hind legs over the orchestra and knocked all the float-lights out. They kept roaring, ‘Bring him out! bring him out!’ as if they thought I was going to put him under my arm—a thundering big brute. I was afraid he’d crack his knees, and I should have to pay for him. The fiddler was rather uneasy, I can tell you, and the people began shifting about. I was frightened, and so I managed to pop part of the sheet over his head, and then I gave a tremendous strain and brought him back again.

“How the idea of lifting a horse ever came into my head, I don’t know. It came in a minute; I had never tried it before. I knew I should have a tremendous purchase. The fact is, I had intended to do a swindle by having lines passed down my dress, and for somebody behind to pull the ropes and help me. The town was in an uproar when I announced I should do it.

“It was at my benefit that I first broke stones with my fist. I don’t know whose original notion it was. I was not the first; there’s a trick in it. It’s done this way: anybody can do it. You take a cobbler’s lapstone, and it’s put on a half-hundred weight; you must hold it half an inch above, and then the concussion of the fist coming down smashes it all to bits. Any one can do it.

“I cleared about eight pounds by my benefit. I was a regular swell in those days. The white coats had just come up, and I had one made with two-shilling pieces for buttons, and with polished-leather Wellington’s I’d walk about the town, the king of the place.

“I’ve been down to Manchester performing. I’ve been, too, to the Standard Theatre as well as the Victoria and the Marylebone. People won’t believe I really do break the stone on my chest. Some ask me what I wear under my dress, though the fact is, that if I had anything hard there, it would just about kill me, for it’s by yielding to the blow that I save myself. I actually gammoned one chap that the stones were made of small pieces stuck together with paste, and he offered to give me any sum to tell him what the paste was made of.

“When I’m engaged for a full performance I do this. All the weights, and the stone and the hammer, are ranged in front of the stage. Then I come on dressed in silk tights with a spangled trunk. Then I enter at the back of the stage, and first do several feats of posturing, such as skipping through my leg or passing it down my back, or splits. Then I take a ladder and mount to the top, and stand up on it, and hold one leg in my hand, shouldering it; and then I give a spring with the other leg, and shoot off to the other side of the stage and squash down with both legs open, doing a split. It’s a very good trick, and always gets a round. Then I do a trick with a chair standing on the seat, and I take one foot in my hand and make a hoop of the leg, and then hop with one leg through the hoop of the other, and spring over the back and come down in a split on the other side. I never miss this trick, though, if the chair happens to be ricketty, I may catch the toe, but it doesn’t matter much.

“Then I begin my weight business. I take one half-hundred weight and hold it up at arm’s-length; and I also hold it out perpendicularly, and bring it up again and swing it two or three times round the head, and then throw it up in the air and catch it four or five times running; not by the ring, as others do, but in the open hand.

“The next trick is doing the same thing with both hands instead of one, that is with two weights at the same time; and then, after that, I take up a half-hundred by the teeth, and shouldering the leg at the same, and in that style I fall down into the splits. Then I raise myself up gradually, till I’m upright again. After I’m upright I place the weight on my forehead, and lay down flat on my back with it, without touching with the hands. I take it off when I’m down and place it in my mouth, and walk round the stage like a Greenwich-pensioner, with my feet tucked up like crossing the arms, and only using my knees. Then I tie three together, and hold them in the mouth, and I put one in each hand. Then I stand up with them and support them. It’s an awful weight, and you can’t do much exhibiting with them.

“When I was at Vauxhall, Yarmouth, last year, I hurt my neck very badly in lifting those weights in the mouth. It pulled out the back of my neck, and I was obliged to give over work for months. It forced my head over one shoulder, and then it sunk, as if I’d got a stiff neck. I did nothing to it, and only went to a doctor-chap, who made me bathe the neck in hot water. That’s all.

“One of my most curious tricks is what I call the braces trick. It’s a thing just like a pair of braces, only, instead of a button, there’s a half-hundred weight at each end, so that there are two behind and two in front. Then I mount on two swinging ropes with a noose at the end, and I stretch out my legs into a split, and put a half-hundred on each thigh, and take up another in my mouth. You may imagine how heavy the weight is, when I tell you that I pulled the roof of a place in once at Chelsea. It was a exhibition then. The tiles and all come down, and near smothered me. You must understand, that in these tricks I have to put the weights on myself, and raise them from the ground, and that makes it so difficult.

“The next, and the best, and most difficult trick of all is, I have a noose close to the ceiling, in which I place one of my ankles, and I’ve another loose noose with a hook at the end, and I place that on the other ankle. Two half-hundreds are placed on this hook, and one in each hand. The moment these weights are put on this ankle, it pulls my legs right apart, so that they form a straight line from the ceiling, like a plumb-line, and my body sticks out at the side horizontally, like a T-square sideways. I strike an attitude when I have the other weights in my hand, and then another half-hundred is put in my mouth, and I am swung backwards and forwards for about eight or twelve times. It don’t hurt the ankle, because the sling is padded. At first it pulls you about, and gives you a tremendous ricking. After this rope-performance I take a half-hundred and swing it round about fifty times. It goes as rapidly as a wheel, and if I was to miss my aim I should knock my brains out. I have done it seventy times, but that was to take the shine out of an opposition fellow.

“I always wind up with breaking the stone, and I don’t mind how thick it is, so long as it isn’t heavy enough to crush me. A common curb-stone, or a Yorkshire-flag, is nothing to me, and I’ve got so accustomed to this trick, that once it took thirty blows with a twenty-eight pound sledge-hammer to break the stone, and I asked for a cigar and smoked it all the while.

“I’ll tell you another trick I’ve done, and that’s walking on the ceiling. Of course I darn’t do it in the Professor Sands’ style, for mine was a dodge. Professor Sands used an air-exhausting boot, on the model of a fly’s foot, and it was a legitimate performance indeed; he and another man, to whom he gave the secret of his boots, are the only two who ever did it. The chap that came over here wasn’t the real Sands. The fact is well known to the profession, that Sands killed himself on his benefit night in America. After walking on the marble slab in the Circus, somebody bet him he couldn’t do it on any ceiling, and he for a wager went to a Town-hall, and done it, and the ceiling gave way, and he fell and broke his neck. The chap that came over here was Sands’ attendant, and he took the name and the boots, and came over as Professor Sands.

“The first who ever walked on the ceiling, by a dodge, was a man of the name of Herman, a wizard, who wound up his entertainment at the City of London by walking on some planks suspended in the air. I was there, and at once saw his trick. I knew it was a sleight-of-hand thing. I paid great attention and found him out.

“I then went to work in this way. I bought two planks about thirteen foot long, and an inch thick. In these planks I had small traps, about two inches long by one inch wide, let into the wood, and very nicely fitted, so that the cracks could not be seen. The better to hide the cracks, I had the wood painted marble, and the blue veins arranged on the cracks. These traps were bound on the upper side with iron hooping to strengthen them. Then I made my boots. They were something like Chinese boots, with a very thick sole, made on the principle of the bellows of an accordion. These bellows were round, about the size of a cheese-plate, and six inches deep. To the sole of the boot I had an iron plate and a square tenter-hook riveted in.

“Then came the performance. There was no net under me, and the planks was suspended about twenty feet from the stage. I went up on the ladder and inserted the hook on one boot into the first trap. The sucker to the boot hid the hook, and made it appear as if I held by suction. The traps were about six inches apart, and that gave me a very small step. The hooks being square ones—tenter-hooks—I could slip them out easily. It had just the same appearance as Sands, and nobody ever taught me how to do it. I did this feat at the Albion Concert-rooms, just opposite the Effingham Saloon. I had eighteen shillings a-week there for doing it. I never did it anywhere else, for it was a bother to carry the planks about with me. I did it for a month, every night three times. One night I fell down. You see you can never make sure, for if you swung a little, it worked the hook off. I always had a chap walking along under me to catch me, and he broke my fall, so that I didn’t hurt myself. I ran up again, and did it a second time without an accident. There was tremendous applause. I think I should have fallen on my hands if the chap hadn’t been there.

“If the Secretary of State hadn’t put down the balloon business, I should a made a deal of money. There is danger of course, but so there is if you’re twenty or thirty feet. They do it now fifty feet high, and that’s as bad as if you were two hundred or a mile in the air. The only danger is getting giddy from the height, but those who go up are accustomed to it.

“I sold the ceiling-walking trick to another fellow for two pounds, after I had done with it, but he couldn’t manage it. He thought he was going to do wonders. He took a half-hundred weight along with him, but he swung like a pendulum, and down he come.

“Why this walking on the ceiling of mine was very near the same as what Harvey Leach did at the Surrey as the gnome fly. He was a tremendous clever fellow. His upper part of the body was very perfectly made, but his legs was so short, they weren’t more than eighteen inches long. That’s why he walked as much on his hands as his legs. That ‘What is It,’ at the Egyptian Hall killed him. They’d have made a heap of money at it if it hadn’t been discovered. He was in a cage, and wonderfully got up. He looked awful. A friend of his comes in, and goes up to the cage, and says, ‘How are you, old fellow?’ The thing was blown up in a minute. The place was in an uproar. It killed Harvey Leach, for he took it to heart and died.

“I reckon Astley’s is the worst money for any man. If a fellow wants to be finished up, let him go there. It doesn’t pay so well as the cheap concerts, unless a man is a very great star, and they must give him his money.

“There are six men, including myself, who do the strong business. That’s all I’m beware of in London, or England. Sometimes they change their names, and comes out as Herrs, or Signors, or Monsieurs, but they are generally the same fellows. Most of our foreigners in England come out of Tower-street. There was a house of call there for professionals of all nations, but that ‘public’ is done up now, and they mostly go to the Cooper’s Arms now.

“If a strong man properly understands his business, and pays attention to his engagements, his average earnings will be about two pounds ten shillings a-week. As it is, they now make less than thirty shillings, but they spend it so readily that it doesn’t go so far as a working man’s pound. There’s plenty of people to ask you, ‘What’ll you have?’ but if you’re anything of a man you’re obliged to return the compliment at some time. The swells get hold of you. Perhaps a bottle of wine is called for, and then another; well, then a fellow must be no good if he doesn’t pay for the third when it comes, and the day’s money don’t run to it, and you’re in a hole.”

The juggler from whom I received the following account, was spoken of by his companions and friends as “one of the cleverest that ever came out.” He was at this time performing in the evening at one of the chief saloons on the other side of the water.

He certainly appears to have been successful enough when he first appeared in the streets, and the way in which he squandered the amount of money he then made is a constant source of misery to him, for he kept exclaiming in the midst of his narrative, “Ah! I might have been a gentleman now, if I hadn’t been the fool I was then.”

As a proof of his talents and success he assured me, that when Ramo Samee first came out, he not only learned how to do all the Indian’s tricks, but also did them so dexterously, that when travelling “Samee has often paid him ten shillings not to perform in the same town with him.”

He was a short man, with iron-grey hair, which had been shaved high upon the temples to allow him to assume the Indian costume. The skin of the face was curiously loose, and formed deep lines about the chin, whilst in the cheeks there were dimples, or rather hollows, almost as deep as those on a sofa cushion. He had a singular look, from his eyebrows and eyes being so black.

His hands were small and delicate, and when he took up anything, he did it as if he were lifting the cup with the ball under it.

“I’m a juggler,” he said, “but I don’t know if that’s the right term, for some people call conjurers jugglers; but it’s wrong. When I was in Ireland they called me a “manulist,” and it was a gentleman wrote the bill out for me. The difference I makes between conjuring and juggling is, one’s deceiving to the eye and the other’s pleasing to the eye—yes, that’s it—it’s dexterity.

“I dare say I’ve been at juggling 40 years, for I was between 14 and 15 when I begun, and I’m 56 now. I remember Ramo Samee and all the first process of the art. He was the first as ever I knew, and very good indeed; there was no other to oppose him, and he must have been good then. I suppose I’m the oldest juggler alive.

“My father was a whitesmith, and kept a shop in the Waterloo-road, and I ran away from him. There was a man of the name of Humphreys kept a riding-school in the Waterloo-road (there was very few houses there then, only brick-fields—aye, what is the Victoria theatre now was then a pin-factory and a hatter’s; it wasn’t opened for performance then), and I used to go to this riding-school and practise tumbling when the horse-dung was thrown out, for I was very ambitious to be a tumbler. When I used to go on this here dung-heap, sometimes father would want me to blow the fire or strike for him, and he’d come after me and catch me tumbling, and take off his apron and wallop me with it all the way home; and the leather strings used to hurt, I can tell you.

“I first went to work at the pin-factory, where the Coburg’s built now, and dropped tumbling then. Then I went to a hatter’s in Oakley-street, and there I took to tumbling again, and used to get practising on the wool-packs (they made the hats then out of wool stuff and hare-skins, and such-like, and you couldn’t get a hat then under 25s.); I couldn’t get my heart away from tumbling all the time I was there, for it was set on it. I’d even begin tumbling when I went out on errands, doing hand-spring, and starts-up (that’s laying on your back and throwing yourself up), and round-alls (that’s throwing yourself backwards on to your hands and back again to your feet), and walking on my hands. I never let any of the men see me practise. I had to sweep the warehouse up, and all the wool was there, and I used to have a go to myself in the morning before they was up.

“The way I got into my professional career was this: I used to have to go and get the men’s beer, for I was kept for that. You see, I had to go to the men’s homes to fetch their breakfasts, and the dinners and teas—I wish I had such a place now. The men gave me a shilling a-week, and there was twelve of them when in full work, and the master gave me 4s. 6d. Besides that they never worked on a Monday, but I was told to fetch their food just the same, so that their wives mightn’t know; and I had all their twelve dinners, breakfasts, and so on. I kept about six of the boys there, and anybody might have the victuals that liked, for I’ve sometimes put ’em on a post for somebody to find.

“I was one day going to fetch the men’s beer when I meets another boy, and he says, ‘You can’t walk on your hands.’ ‘Cant I!’ says I, and I puts down the cans and off I started, and walked on my hands from one end of the street to the other, pretty nigh. Mr. Sanders, the rider, one of the oldest riders that was (before Ducrow’s time, for Ducrow was a ’prentice of his, and he allowed Sanders 30s. a-week for all his lifetime), was passing by and he see me walking on my hands, and he come up and says, ‘My boy, where do you belong to?’ and I answers, ‘My father;’ and then he says, ‘Do you think he’d let you come along with me?’ I told him I’d go and ask; and I ran off, but never went to father—you’ll understand—and then in a minute or two I came back and said, ‘Father says yes, I may go when I thinks proper;’ and then Mr. Sanders took me to Lock’s-fields, and there was a gig, and he drove me down to Ware, in Hertfordshire.

“You may as well say this here. The circusses at that time wasn’t as they are now. They used to call it in the profession moulding, and the public termed it mountebanking. Moulding was making a ring in a field, for there was no booths then, and it comes from digging up the mould to make it soft for the horses’ feet. There was no charge for seeing the exhibition, for it was in a field open to the public; but it was worked in this way: there was prizes given away, and the tickets to the lottery were 1s. each, and most of the people bought ’em, though they weren’t obligated to do so. Sometimes the prizes would be a five-pound note, or a silver watch, maybe, or a sack of flour, or a pig. They used to take the tickets round in a hat, and everybody saw what they drawed. They was all prizes—perhaps a penny ring—but there was no blanks. It was the last night that paid best. The first and second nights Sanders would give them a first-rate prize; but when the last night came, then a half-crown article was the highest he’d give away, and that helped to draw up. I’ve know’d him give 4l. or 5l. away, when he’d not taken 2l. Mr. Sanders put me to tumbling in the ring. I could tumble well before I went with him, for I’d practised on this dung-heap, and in this hatter’s shop. I beat all his apprentices what he had. He didn’t give me anything a-week, only my keep, but I was glad to run away and be a showman. I was very successful in the ring-tumbling, and from that I got to be clever on the stilts and on the slack-rope, or, as they call it in the profession, the waulting-rope. When I was ragged I used to run home again and get some clothes. I’ve many a time seen him burst out into tears to see me come home so ragged. ‘Ah,’ he’d say, ‘where have you been now?—tumbling, I suppose.’ I’d answer, ‘Yes, father;’ and then he’d say, ‘Ah, your tumbling will bring you to the gallows.’ I’d stop with him till he gave me some fresh clothes, and then I’d bolt again. You see I liked it. I’d go and do it for nothing. Now I dread it; but it’s too late, unfortunately.

“I ran away from Sanders at last, and went back to father. One night I went to the theatre, and there I see Ramo Samee doing his juggling, and in a minute I forgot all about the tumbling, and only wanted to do as he did. Directly I got home I got two of the plates, and went into a back-room and began practising, making it turn round on the top of a stick. I broke nearly all the plates in the house doing this—that is, what I didn’t break I cracked. I broke the entire set of a dozen plates, and yet couldn’t do it. When mother found all her plates cracked, she said, ‘It’s that boy;’ and I had a good hiding. Then I put on my Sunday suit and bolted away again. I always bolted in my best clothes. I then went about tumbling in the public-houses, till I had got money enough to have a tin plate made with a deep rim, and with this tin plate I learnt it, so that I could afterwards do it with a crockery one. I kept on my tumbling till I got a set of wooden balls turned, and I stuck brass coffin-nails all over them, so that they looked like metal when they was up; and I began teaching myself to chuck them. It took a long time learning it, but I was fond of it, and determined to do it. I was doing pretty well with my tumbling, making perhaps my 3s. or 4s. a-night, so I was pretty well off. Then I got some tin knives made, and learnt to throw them: and I bought some iron rings, and bound them with red and blue tape, to make them look handsome; and I learnt to toss them the same as the balls. I practised balancing pipes, too. Every time I went into a public-house I’d take a pipe away, so it didn’t cost me anything. I dare say I was a twelvemonth before I could juggle well. When I could throw the three balls middling tidy I used to do them on the stilts, and that was more than ever a man attempted in them days; and yet I was only sixteen or seventeen years of age. I must have been summut then, for I went to Oxford fair, and there I was on my stilts, chucking my balls in the public streets, and a gentleman came up to me and asked me if I’d take an engagement, and I said ‘Yes, if it was a good un’—for I was taking money like smoke; and he agreed to give me a pound a-day during the fair; it was a week fair. I had so much money, I didn’t know what to do with it. I actually went and bought a silk neckerchief for every day in the week, and flash boots, and caps, and everything I could see, for I never had so much money as in them days. The master, too, made his share out of me, for he took money like dirt.

“From Oxford I worked my way over to Ireland. I had got my hand into juggling now, but I kept on with my old apparatus, though I bought a new set in Dublin. I used to have a bag and bit of carpet, and perform in streets. I had an Indian’s dress made, with a long horse-hair tail down my back, and white bag-trousers, trimmed with red, like a Turk’s, tied right round at the ankles, and a flesh-coloured skull-cap. My coat was what is called a Turkish fly, in red velvet, cut off like a waistcoat, with a peak before and behind. I was a regular swell, and called myself the Indian Juggler. I used to perform in the barracks twice a-day, morning and evening. I used to make a heap of money. I have taken, in one pitch, more than a pound. I dare say I’ve taken 3l. a-day, and sometimes more indeed; I’ve saved a waggon and a booth there,—a very nice one,—and the waggon cost me 14l. second-hand; one of Vickry’s it was, a wild-beast waggon. I dare say I was six months in Dublin, doing first-rate. My performances was just the same then as they is now; only I walked on stilts, and they was new then, and did the business. I was the first man ever seed in Ireland, either juggling or on the stilts.

“I had a drum and pipes, and I used to play them myself. I played any tune,—anythink, just what I could think of, to draw the crowd together; then I’d mount the stilts and do what I called ‘a drunken frolic,’ with a bottle in my hand, tumbling about and pretending to be drunk. Then I’d chuck the balls about, and the knives, and the rings, and twirl the plate. I wound up with the ball, throwing it in the air and catching it in a cup. I didn’t do any balancing pipes on my nose, not whilst on the stilts.

“I used to go out one day on the stilts and one on the ground, to do the balancing. I’d balance pipes, straws, peacocks’ feathers, and the twirling plate.

“It took me a long time learning to catch the ball in the cup. I practised in the fields or streets; anywhere. I began by just throwing the ball a yard or two in the air, and then went on gradually. The first I see do the ball was a man of the name of Dussang, who came over with Ramo Samee. It’s a very dangerous feat, and even now I’m never safe of it, for the least wind will blow it to the outside, and spoil the aim. I broke my nose at Derby races. A boy ran across the ring, and the ball, which weighs a quarter of a pound, was coming right on him, and would have fallen on his head, and perhaps killed him, and I ran forward to save him, and couldn’t take my aim proper, and it fell on my nose, and broke it. It bled awfully, and it kept on for near a month. There happened to be a doctor looking on, and he came and plastered it up; and then I chucked the ball up again, (for I didn’t care what I did in them days), and the strain of its coming down made it burst out again. They actually gived me money not to throw the ball up any more. I got near a sovereign, in silver, give me from the Grand Stand, for that accident.

“At Newcastle I met with another accident with throwing the ball. It came down on my head, and it regularly stunned me, so that I fell down. It swelled up, and every minute got bigger, till I a’most thought I had a double head, for it felt so heavy I could scarce hold it up. I was obliged to knock off work for a fortnight.

“In Ireland I used to make the people laugh, to throw up raw potatoes and let them come down on my naked forehead and smash. People give more money when they laugh. No, it never hurt my forehead, it’s got hardened; nor I never suffered from headaches when I was practicing.

“As you catch the ball in the cup, you are obliged to give, you know, and bend to it, or it would knock the brains out of you pretty well. I never heard of a man killing himself with the ball, and I’ve only had two accidents.

“I got married in Ireland, and then I started off with the booth and waggon, and she used to dance, and I’d juggle and balance. We went to the fairs, but it didn’t answer, and we lost all; for my wife turned out a very bad sort of woman. She’s dead now, through drink. I went to the Isle of Man from Ireland; I had practised my wife in the stilts, and learnt her how to use them, and we did well there. They never see such a thing in their lives, and we took money like dirt. They christened us the ‘Manx Giants.’ If my wife had been like my present one, I should be a made gentleman by this time; but she drank away my booth, and waggon, and horse, and all.

“I saved up about 20l. in the Isle of Man; and from there we went to Scotland, and there my wife died,—through drink. That took away all the money I had saved. We didn’t do much in Scotland, only in one particular town,—that’s Edinburgh,—on New-year’s day. We took a good deal of money, 2l. I think; and we carried coppers about in a stocking with me.

“I travelled about in England and Wales when I married my second wife. She’s a strong woman, and lifts 700 lbs. by the hair of her head.

“When I got back to London I hadn’t a shilling in my pocket, though my wife was very careful of me; but times got bad, and what not. We got a situation at 12s. a day, and all collections, at Stepney fair, which would sometimes come to a pound, and at others 30s.; for collections is better than salary any days: that set us up in a little house, which we’ve got now.

“I’m too old now to go out regularly in the streets. It tires me too much, if I have to appear at a penny theatre in the evening. When I do go out in the streets, I carry a mahogany box with me, to put my things out in. I’ve got three sets of things now, knives, balls, and cups. In fact, I never was so well off in apparatus as now; and many of them have been given to me as presents, by friends as have gi’n over performing. Knives, and balls, and all, are very handsome. The balls, some a pound, and some 2 lbs. weight, and the knives about 1½ lbs.

“When I’m out performing, I get into all the open places as I can. I goes up the Commercial-road and pitches at the Mile-end-gate, or about Tower-hill, or such-like. I’m well known in London, and the police knows me so well they very seldom interfere with me. Sometimes they say, ‘That’s not allowed, you know, old man!’ and I say, ‘I shan’t be above two or three minutes,’ and they say, ‘Make haste, then!’ and then I go on with the performance.

“I think I’m the cleverest juggler out. I can do the pagoda, or the canopy as some calls it; that is a thing like a parasol balanced by the handle on my nose, and the sides held up by other sticks, and then with a pea-shooter I blow away the supports. I also do what is called ‘the birds and bush,’ which is something of the same, only you knock off the birds with a pea-shooter. The birds is only made of cork, but it’s very difficult, because you have to take your balance agin every bird as falls; besides, you must be careful the birds don’t fall in your eyes, or it would take away your sight and spoil the balance. The birds at back are hardest to knock off, because you have to bend back, and at the same time mind you don’t topple the tree off.

“These are the only feats we perform in balancing, and the juggling is the same now as ever it was, for there ain’t been no improvements on the old style as I ever heerd on; and I suppose balls and knives and rings will last for a hundred years to come yet.

“I and my wife are now engaged at the ‘Temple of Mystery’ in Old Street-road, and it says on the bills that they are ‘at present exhibiting the following new and interesting talent,’ and then they calls me ‘The Renowned Indian Juggler, performing his extraordinary Feats with Cups, Balls, Daggers, Plates, Knives, Rings, Balancing, &c. &c.’

“After the juggling I generally has to do conjuring. I does what they call ‘the pile of mags,’ that is, putting four halfpence on a boy’s cap, and making them disappear when I say ‘Presto, fly!’ Then there’s the empty cups, and making ’taters come under ’em, or there’s bringing a cabbage into a empty hat. There’s also making a shilling pass from a gentleman’s hand into a nest of boxes, and such-like tricks: but it ain’t half so hard as juggling, nor anything like the work.

“I and my missis have 5s. 6d. a-night between us, besides a collection among the company, which I reckon, on the average, to be as good as another pound a-week, for we made that the last week we performed.

“I should say there ain’t above twenty jugglers in all England—indeed, I’m sure there ain’t—such as goes about pitching in the streets and towns. I know there’s only four others besides myself in London, unless some new one has sprung up very lately. You may safely reckon their earnings for the year round at a pound a-week, that is, if they stick to juggling; but most of us joins some other calling along with juggling, such as the wizard’s business, and that helps out the gains.

“Before this year, I used to go down to the sea-side in the summer, and perform at the watering-places. A chap by the name of Gordon is at Ramsgate now. It pays well on the sands, for in two or three hours, according to the tides, we picks up enough for the day.”

“I call myself a wizard as well; but that’s only the polite term for conjurer; in fact, I should think that wizard meant an astrologer, and more of a fortune-teller. I was fifteen years of age when I first began my professional life; indeed I opened with Gentleman Cooke at the Rotunda, in Blackfriars’-road, and there I did Jeremiah Stitchem to his Billy Button.

“My father held a very excellent situation in the Customs, and lived at his ease, in very affluent circumstances. His library alone was worth two hundred pounds. I was only ten years of age when my father died. He was a very gay man, and spent his income to the last penny. He was a very gay man, very gay. After my mother was left a widow, the library was swept off for a year’s rent. I was too young to understand it’s value, and my mother was in too much grief to pay attention to her affairs. Another six-months’ rent sold up the furniture. We took a small apartment close in the neighbourhood. My mother had no means, and we were left to shift for ourselves. I was a good boy, and determined to get something to do. The first day I went out I got a situation at four shillings a-week, to mind the boots outside a boot-maker’s shop in Newington Causeway. The very first week I was there I was discharged, for I fell asleep on my stool at the door, and a boy stole a pair of boots. From there I went to a baker’s, and had to carry out the bread, and for four years I got different employments, as errand boy or anything.

“For many years the mall opposite Bedlam was filled with nothing else but shows and show-people. All the caravans and swing-boats, and what not, used to assemble there till the next fair was on. They didn’t perform there, it was only their resting-place. My mother was living close by, and every opportunity I had I used to associate with the boys belonging to the shows, and then I’d see them practising their tumbling and tricks. I was so fond of this that I got practising with these boys. I’d go and paint my face as clown, and although dressed in my ordinary clothes I’d go and tumble with the rest of the lads, until I could do it as well as they could. I did it for devilment, that’s what I call it, and that it was which first made me think of being a professional.

“From there I heard of a situation to sell oranges, biscuits, and ginger-beer, at the Surrey Theatre. It was under Elliston’s management. I sold the porter up in the gallery, and I had three-halfpence out of every shilling, and I could make one shilling and sixpence a-night; but the way I used to do it at that time was this: I went to fetch the beer, and then I’d get half-a-gallon of table-beer and mix it with the porter; and I tell you, I’ve made such a thing as fifteen shillings of a boxing-night. I alone could sell five gallons of a night; but then their pints at that time was tin measures, and little more than half-a-pint: besides, I’d froth it up. It was threepence a pint, and a wonderful profit it must have been. From there I got behind the scenes as supernumerary, at the time Nelson Lee was manager of the supers.

“At this time the Rotunda in the Blackfriars’-road was an hotel kept by a Mr. Ford. Mr Cook rented certain portions of the building, and went to a wonderful expense building a Circus there. The history of the Rotunda is that at one time it was a museum, and the lecture-hall is there to the present day. It’s a beautiful building, and the pillars are said to be very valuable, and made of rice. It’s all let to one party, a Frenchman, but he keeps the lecture-hall closed. When Cook took the Rotunda I asked him for an engagement, and he complied. I was mad for acting. I met with great success as Jeremiah Stitchem; and the first week he gave me one pound. Cook didn’t make a good thing of it. Nobody could get their money, and the circus was closed. Then a Mr. Edwards took it. He was an optician, and opened it as a penny exhibition, with a magic lantern and a conjurer. Now comes how I became a conjurer. I couldn’t tear myself away from the Rotunda. I went there and hovered about the door day and night. I wanted to get a situation there. He knew me when I was in the circus, and he asked me what I was a-doing of. I said, ‘Nothing, sir.’ Then he offered to give me one of the door-keeper’s places, from ten in the morning till eleven at night, for three shillings a-day, and I took it. One day the conjurer that was there didn’t come, but they opened the doors just the same, and there was an immense quantity of people waiting there. They couldn’t do nothing without the conjurer. He always left his apparatus there of a night, in a bag. Well, this Edwards, knowing that I could do a few tricks, he came up to me and asks whether I knew where the wizard lived. I didn’t, and Edwards says, ‘What am I to do? I shall have to return this money: I shall go mad.’ I said I could do a few tricks; and he says, ‘Well, go and do it.’ The people was making a row, stamping and calling out, ‘Now then, is this here wizard coming?’ When I went in, I give great satisfaction. I went and did all the tricks, just as the other had done it. At that time it was the custom to say after each performance, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to inform you that I get no salary here, and only have to rely upon your generosity for a collection.’ When the plate went round I got one shilling and sixpence. ‘Hulloa!’ I said to myself, ‘is this the situation?’ Then I sold some penny books, explaining how the tricks was done, and I got sixpence more. That was two shillings. I had four shillings a-day besides, and they would have sometimes twenty houses of a day, and I have seen thirty. The houses were not always very good. Sometimes we’d perform to seven or to twenty. It all told up. It was at night we did the principal work,—crowded upwards of two hundred there. We weren’t in the Circus, but in the Rotunda. I’d make fifteen shillings a-night then. I got a permanent engagement then. I made too much money. I went and bought a pack of cards and card-boxes, and a pea-caddy for passing peas from a handkerchief to a vase, and linking-rings, and some tape. That, with tying knots in a silk handkerchief, concluded the whole of my performances. In fact, it was all I knew. My talking helped me immensely, for I could patter well to them, and the other wizard couldn’t.

“I left the Rotunda in consequence of the party having other novelties. He had Ambrosini, who done the sticks and string balls; but I was there three or four years, and that’s a long time to be at one place. Then I joined a street-performer. He used to do the fire-proof business, such as eating the link, and the burning tow, and so on. Then I manufactured a portable table: it folded up, and I could carry it under my arm. It was as large as an ordinary dressing-table. We went in equal shares. I was dressed with ballet shirt, and braces, with spangled tights and fleshings. We pulled our coats off when we begun to perform. All the tricks we carried in a bag.

“The first pitch we made was near Bond-street. He began with his part of the performance whilst I was dressing up the table. It was covered with black velvet with fringe, and the apparatus ranged on it. After him I began my performance, and he went round for the nobbings. I did card tricks, such as the sautez-le-coup with the little finger. It’s dividing the pack in half, and then bringing the bottom half to the top; and then, if there’s a doubt, you can convey the top card to the bottom again; or if there’s any doubt, you can bring the pack to its original position. It was Lord de Roos’ trick. He won heaps of money at it. He had pricked cards. You see, if you prick a card at the corner, card-players skin their finger at the end, so as to make it sensitive, and they can tell a pricked card in a moment. Besides sautez-le-coup, I used to do innumerable others, such as telling a named card by throwing a pack in the air and catching the card on a sword point. Then there was telling people’s thoughts by the cards. All card tricks are feats of great dexterity and quickness of hand. I never used a false pack of cards. There are some made for amateurs, but professionals never use trick cards. The greatest art is what is termed forcing, that is, making a party take the card you wish him to; and let him try ever so well, he will have it, though he’s not conscious of it. Another feat of dexterity is slipping the card, that is, slipping it from top, bottom, or centre, or placing one or two cards from the top. If you’re playing a game at all-fours and you know the ace of clubs is at the bottom, you can slip it one from the top, so that you know your partner opposite has it. These are the only two principal things in card tricks, and if you can do them dexteriously you can do a great part of a wizard’s art. Sautez-le-coup is the principal thing, and it’s done by placing the middle finger in the centre of the pack, and then with the right hand working the change. I can do it with one hand.

“We did well with pitching in the streets. We’d take ten shillings of a morning, and then go out in the afternoon again and take perhaps fifteen shillings of nobbings. The footmen were our best customers in the morning, for they had leisure then. We usually went to the squares and such parts at the West-end. This was twenty years ago, and it isn’t anything like so good now, in consequence of my partner dying of consumption; brought on, I think, by fire eating, for he was a very steady young fellow and not at all given to drink. I was for two years in the streets with the fire-eating, and we made I should say such a thing as fifty shillings a-week each. Then you must remember, we could have made more if we had liked; for some mornings, if we had had a good day before, we wouldn’t go out if it was raining, or we had been up late. I next got a situation, and went to a wax-works to do conjuring. It was a penny exhibition in the New Cut, Lambeth. I had four shillings a-day and nobbings—a collection, and what with selling my books, it came to ten shillings a-day, for we had never less than ten and often twenty performances a-day. They had the first dissecting figure there—a Samson—and they took off the cranium and showed the brains, and also the stomach, and showed the intestines. It was the first ever shown in this country, and the maker of it had (so they say) a pension of one hundred pounds a year for having composed it. He was an Italian.

“We were burnt down at Birmingham, and I lost all my rattle-traps. However, the inhabitants made up a subscription which amply repaid me for my loss, and I then came to London, hearing that the Epsom races was on at the time, which I wouldn’t have missed Epsom races, not at that time, not for any amount of money, for it was always good to one as three pounds, and I have had as much as seven pounds from one carriage alone. It was Lord Chesterfield’s, and each gentleman in it gave us a sov. I went down with three acrobats to Epsom, but they were dealing unfair with me, and there was something that I didn’t like going on; so I quarrelled with them and joined with another conjurer, and it was on this very occasion we got the seven pounds from one carriage. We both varied in our entertainments; because, when I had done my performance, he made a collection; and when he had done I got the nobbings. We went to Lord Chesterfield’s carriage on the hill, and there I did the sovereign trick. ‘My Lord, will you oblige me with the temporary loan of a sovereign?’ ‘Yes, old fellow: what are you going to do with it?’ I then did passing the sovereign, he having marked it first; and then, though he held it tightly, I changed it for a farthing. I did this for Lord Waterford and Lord Waldegrave, and the whole of them in the carriage. I always said, ‘Now, my Lord, are you sure you hold it?’ ‘Yes, old fellow.’ ‘Now, my Lord, if I was to take the sovereign away from you without you knowing it, wouldn’t you say I was perfectly welcome to it?’ He’d say, ‘Yes, old fellow; go on.’ Then, when he opened the handkerchief he had a farthing, and all of them made me a present of the sovereign I had performed with.

“Then we went to the Grand Stand, and then after our performance they’d throw us halfpence from above. We had our table nicely fitted up. We wouldn’t take halfpence. We would collect up the coppers, perhaps five or six shillings worth, and then we’d throw the great handful among the boys. ‘A bit of silver, your honours, if you please;’ then sixpence would come, and then a shilling, and in ten minutes we would have a sovereign. We must have earned our six pounds each that Epsom Day; but then our expenses were heavy, for we paid three shillings a-night for our lodging alone.

“It was about this time that I took to busking. I never went into tap-rooms, only into parlours; because one parlour would be as good as a dozen tap-rooms, and two good parlours a-night I was quite satisfied with. My general method was this: If I saw a good company in the parlour, I could tell in a moment whether they were likely to suit me. If they were conversing on politics it was no good, you might as well attempt to fly. I have many a-time gone into a parlour, and called for my half-quartern of gin and little drop of cold water, and then, when I began my performances, it has been ‘No, no! we don’t want anything of that kind,’ and there has been my half hour thrown away. The company I like best are jolly-looking men, who are sitting silently smoking, or reading the paper. I always got the privilege of performing by behaving with civility to my patrons. Some conjurers, when the company ain’t agreeable, will say, ‘But I will perform;’ and then comes a quarrel, and the room is in future forbid to that man. But I, if they objected, always said, ‘Very well, gentlemen, I’m much obliged to you all the same: perhaps another time. Bad to-night, better next night.’ Then when I came again some would say, ‘I didn’t give you anything the other night, did I? Well, here’s a fourpenny bit,’ and so on.

“When I went into a parlour I usually performed with a big dice, three inches square. I used to go and call for a small drop of gin and water, and put this dice on the seat beside me, as a bit of a draw. Directly I put it down everybody was looking at it. Then I’d get into conversation with the party next to me, and he’d be sure to say, ‘What the deuce is that?’ I’d tell him it was a musical box, and he’d be safe to say, ‘Well, I should like to hear it, very much.’ Then I’d offer to perform, if agreeable, to the company; often the party would offer to name it to the company, and he’d call to the other side of the room, (for they all know each other in these parlours) ‘I say, Mr. So-and-so, have you any objection to this gentleman showing us a little amusement?’ and they are all of them safe to say, ‘Not in the least. I’m perfectly agreeable if others are so;’ and then I’d begin. I’d pull out my cards and card-boxes, and the bonus genius or the wooden doll, and then I’d spread a nice clean cloth (which I always carried with me) on the table, and then I’d go to work. I worked the dice by placing it on the top of a hat, and with a penknife pretending to make an incision in the crown to let the solid block pass through. It is done by having a tin covering to the solid dice, and the art consists in getting the solid block into the hat without being seen. That’s the whole of the trick. I begin by striking the block to show it is solid. Then I place two hats one on the other, brim to brim. Then I slip the solid dice into the under hat, and place the tin covering on the crown of the upper one. Then I ask for a knife, and pretend to cut the hat-crown the size of the tin-can on the top, making a noise by dragging my nail along the hat, which closely resembles cutting with a knife. I’ve often heard people say, ‘None of that!’ thinking I was cutting their hat. Then I say, ‘Now, gentlemen, if I can pass this dice through the crown into the hat beneath, you’ll say it’s a very clever deception,’ because all conjurers acknowledge that they deceive; indeed, I always say when I perform in parlours, ‘If you can detect me in my deceptions I shall be very much obliged to you by naming it, for it will make me more careful; but if you can’t, the more credit to me.’ Then I place another tin-box over the imitation dice; it fits closely. I say, ‘Presto—quick—begone!’ and clap my hands three times, and then lift up the tin-cases, which are both coloured black inside, and tumble the wooden dice out of the under hat. You see, the whole art consists in passing the solid block unseen into the hat.

“The old method of giving the order for the things to pass was this: ‘Albri kira mumma tousha cocus co shiver de freek from the margin under the crippling hook,’ and that’s a language.”

“In London I had a great quantity of parlours where I was known and allowed to perform. One night I’d take the West-end, and another the East-end. Sometimes I have done four or five houses of an evening, and I have had to walk miles for that—to Woolwich and back for instance, or to Edmonton and back—and occasionally I’d only come home with 1s. 6d. I have also had 8s. from one parlour only, and then I’d consider that a night’s performance, and come home again.

“I remember one very peculiar circumstance which happened to me whilst I was out busking. There is a house at the bottom of York-street, Westminster, where they wouldn’t allow any other conjurer but me. I was very friendly with the landlord, and I went there regularly every week, and I’d invariably take such a thing as 2s. or 3s. out of the room. If I found only a small muster in the parlour, I’d say, ‘I’ll come another evening,’ and go off to another parlour in Pimlico. One night the company in the parlour said, after I had been performing, ‘What a pity it is that one of your talent doesn’t take a large room somewhere, and we’d patronise you.’ ‘Why,’ says the landlord, ‘he can have my large room up-stairs if he likes.’ I agreed to it, and says, ‘Well, gentlemen, we’ll have it next Wednesday evening, if you think proper.’ The landlord didn’t tell his wife that there was a performance to take place on the Wednesday evening. When I went to this house to the appointment, there were about thirty assembled. The landlord was out. When we asked the landlady for the room, she wouldn’t, and we had all the difficulty in the world before we got the apartment. I wanted a large table-cloth to dress up my stand, for I have, in order to perform some of my tricks, to make a bag with the end of the table-cloth to drop things into. We sent the waiter to ask for this cloth, and says she, ‘I ain’t going to lend no conjurers table-cloths.’ Then a gentleman says, ‘Oh, nonsense, I’ll soon get you a table-cloth. She’ll lend me one in a minute.’ He goes to the bar, but the reply she made was, ‘I’m surprised at Mr. W. having such a performance up there, and no table-cloth shall you have from me.’ He came up-stairs, and said he had been grossly insulted at the bar; and then another gentleman said, ‘Well, this young man shan’t be disappointed, and we’ll see if we can’t find another house down the street, and move it to there, and we’ll all go.’ One went out, and came back and said he’d not only got a very large room and everything required, but the landlord had four friends in the bar who’d join our company. I made altogether about 1l. that night, for I made no charge, and it was altogether contribution. None of that company ever returned to that house again, so he lost the whole of his parlour customers. I could never go into that house again, and I really was sorry for the landlord, for it wasn’t his fault. This is a very good proof that it is to the advantage of landlords to allow respectable performers to visit their parlours.

“At others times I have sometimes gone into a parlour and found the customers talking politics. If it was a very good company, and I saw good business, I’d try to break the thread of the discussion by saying when there was a pause in the debate, ‘Gentlemen, would you like to see some of my performances, such as walking round the ceiling with my head down?’ Then they’d say, ‘Well, that’s very curious; let’s see you.’ Of course I couldn’t do this, and I only said it to attract notice. Then I’d do my card-tricks, and make a collection, and, after that, remark that as the ceiling-walking performance was a dangerous one, I must have a sovereign; of course they wouldn’t give this, and I’d take my leave.

“One night, in Oxford-street, I met a singer, and he says, ‘Where are you going?’ I told him I was hunting for a good parlour, and he told me he had just left a good company at such and such a house. I thanked him, and I went there. It was up a long passage, and I entered the room without asking the landlord’s permission, and I called for a glass of porter. As soon as I saw the waiter out of the room I made my appeal to the company. They were all of them agreeable and most happy to see my performances. After I’d done my performance I went to make a collection, and they said, ‘Oh, certainly not; we thought you’d done it for your own amusement; we never give anything to anybody.’ I lost one hour of the best time of the night. I said, ‘Very good, gentlemen, I’m satisfied if you are.’ It was an agreed plan with the landlord, for he came into the room; and he says, ‘What, another one!’ and he seized me by the neck and pushed me out. As soon as I got outside I met another conjurer, and he asked where I’d been. I thought I’d let him be served the same as I was, so I showed him the house, and told him he could make a second ‘nobbings’ as we term it. I stopped outside peeping over the glass, and presently I see him being pushed out by the landlord as I had been. We had a hearty laugh, and then we started off to Regent-street, to one of our principal houses, but there wasn’t a soul in the room. It was a house in a back-street, where none but grooms and footmen resort to. But we was determined to have some money that night, as both our families wanted it—both him and me did.

“Passing a tobacconist’s shop in Regent-street, we saw three gents conversing with the lady behind the counter. I told him I’ll go in, get a pickwick here, and see if I can’t have a performance in the front of this counter. These things only wants an introduction; so I looks at my pickwick, and says I, ‘This a pickwick? why I swallows such as these;’ and I apparently swallowed it. One of them says, ‘You don’t mean to say you swallowed it?’ ‘Certainly I did, sir,’ I replied; and then he makes me do it again. Then I told them I’d show them something more wonderful still, so I said, ‘Have you gentlemen such a thing as a couple of half-crowns about you?’ they gave me the money, and I did the trick of passing the money from hand to hand. I said to them, ‘Can you tell me which hand the money’s in?’ says he, ‘Why, anybody can see it’s in that one.’ ‘No, sir,’ says I, ‘I think not.’ ‘If it ain’t,’ says he, ‘you may keep ’em.’ Then I opened both hands, and they were in neither, and he asked where they was then; so I told him I’d given him them back again, which of course he denied, and appeared much surprised. Then I took ’em out of his cravat. It’s a very clever trick, and appears most surprising, though it’s as simple as possible, and all done by the way in which you take them out of the cravat; for you keep them palmed, and have to work ’em up into the folds. Of course I returned the half-crowns to him, but when I heard him say you may keep them I did feel comfortable, for that was something to the good. My friend outside was looking through the window, and I could see him rubbing his hands with glee; I got another half-crown out of them gentlemen before I’d done with them, for I showed ’em a trick with some walking-sticks which were lying on the counter, and also cut the tape in two and made it whole again, and such-like performances. When a fellow is on his beam-ends, as I was then, he must keep his eyes about him, and have impudence enough for anything, or else he may stop and starve. The great art is to be able to do tricks with anything that you can easily get hold of. If you take up a bit of string from a counter, or borrow a couple of shillings of a gentleman, your tricks with them startles him much more than if you had taken them out of your own pocket, for he sees there’s been no preparation. I got ten shillings out of these two gents I spoke of, and then I and my mate went and busked in a parlour, and got fivepence more; so that we shared five and twopence-ha’penny each.

“I have often made a good deal of money in parlours by showing how I did my little tricks, such as cutting the tape and passing the half-crowns. Another thing that people always want to know is the thimble-rig trick. Of course it doesn’t matter so much showing how these tricks are done, because they depend upon the quickness and dexterity of handling. You may know how an artist paints a picture, but you mayn’t be able to paint one yourself.

“I never practised thimble-rigging myself, for I never approved of it as a practice. I’ve known lots of fellows who lived by it. Bless you! they did well, never sharing less than their 4l. or 5l. every day they worked. This is the way it’s done. They have three thimbles, and they put a pea under two of ’em, so that there’s only one without the pea. The man then begins moving them about and saying, ‘Out of this one into that one,’ and so on, and winds up by offering to ‘lay anything, from a shilling to a pound,’ that nobody can tell which thimble the pea is under. Then he turns round to the crowd, and pretends to be pushing them back, and whilst he’s saying, ‘Come, gentlemen, stand more backwarder,’ one of the confederates, who is called ‘a button,’ lifts up one of the thimbles with a pea under it, and laughs to those around, as much as to say, ‘We’ve found it out.’ He shows the pea two or three times, and the last time he does so, he removes it, either by taking it up under his forefinger nail or between his thumb and finger. It wants a great deal of practice to do this nicely, so as not to be found out. When the man turns to the table again the button says, ‘I’ll bet you a couple of sovereigns I know where the pea is. Will any gentleman go me halves?’ Then, if there’s any hesitation, the man at the table will pretend to be nervous and offer to move the thimbles again, but the button will seize him by the arm, and shout as if he was in a passion, ‘No, no, none of that! It was a fair bet, and you shan’t touch ’em.’ He’ll then again ask if anybody will go him halves, and there’s usually somebody flat enough to join him. Then the stranger is asked to lift up the thimble, so that he shouldn’t suspect anything, and of course there’s no pea there. He is naturally staggered a bit, and another confederate standing by will say calmly, ‘I knew you was wrong; here’s the pea;’ and he lifts up the thimble with the second pea under it. If nobody will go shares in the ‘button’s’ bet, then he lifts up the thimble and replaces the pea as he does so, and of course wins the stake, and he takes good care to say as he pockets the sovereign, ‘I knew it was there; what a fool you was not to stand in.’ The second time they repeat the trick there’s sure to be somebody lose his money. There used to be a regular pitch for thimble-riggers opposite Bedlam, when the shows used to put up there. I saw a brewer’s collector lose 7l. there in less than half-an-hour. He had a bag full of gold, and they let him win the three first bets as a draw. Most of these confederates are fighting-men, and if a row ensues they’re sure to get the best of it.

“A very good place where I used to go busking was at Mother Emmerson’s in Jermyn-street. There used to be all sorts of characters there, jugglers, and singers, and all sorts. It was a favourite house of the Marquis of Waterford, and he used to use it nearly every night. I’ve seen him buy a pipe of port, and draw tumblers of it for any body that came in, for his great delight was to make people drunk. He says to Mrs. Emmerson, ‘How much do you want for that port, mother?’ and then he wrote a cheque for the amount and had it tapped. He was a good-hearted fellow, was my Lord; if he played any tricks upon you, he’d always square it up. Many a time he’s given me half-a-pint of brandy, saying, ‘That’s all you’ll get from me.’ Sometimes I’d say to him, ‘Can I show you a few tricks, my Lord?’ and then, when I’d finished, I knew he never gave money if you asked him for it, so I’d let him abuse me, and order me out of the house as a humbug; and then, just as I’d got to the door, he’d call me back and give me half-a-sovereign. I’ve seen him do some wonderful things. I’ve seen him jump into an old woman’s crockeryware-basket, while she was carrying it along, and smash everything. Sometimes he’d get seven or eight cabs and put a lot of fiddlers and other musicians on the roofs, and fill ’em with anybody that liked, and then go off in procession round the streets, he driving the first cab as fast as he could and the bands playing as loud as possible. It’s wonderful the games he’d be up to. But he always paid handsomely for whatever damage he did. If he swept all the glasses off a counter, there was the money to make ’em good again. Whenever I did any tricks before him, I took good care not to produce any apparatus that I cared for, or he’d be sure to smash it.

“One night I hadn’t a penny in the world, and at home I knew they wanted food; so I went out to busk, and I got over in the Old Kent-road, and went to a house there called the Green Man. I walked into the parlour; and though I hadn’t a penny in my pocket, I called for four pen’orth of rum and water. I put my big dice down upon the table by the side of me, and begun sipping my rum, and I could see everybody looking at this dice, and at last, just as I expected, somebody asked what it was. So I says—‘Gentlemen, I get my living this way, and if you like, I shall be happy to show you a few of my deceptions for your entertainment.’ They said, ‘Certainly, young man, we are perfectly agreeable.’ Ah! I thought to myself, thank heaven that’s all right, for I owed for the rum and water you see, and if they’d refused, I don’t know what I should have done. I pulled out my nice clean cloth and laid it upon the table, and to work I went. I had only done one or two tricks, when in comes the waiter, and directly he sees me he cries out, ‘We don’t allow no conjurers or anything of that kind here,’ and I had to pack up again. When he’d gone the company said, ‘Go on, young man, it’s all right now;’ so I out with my cloth again; then in came the landlord, and says he, ‘You’ve already been told we don’t allow none of you conjurer fellows here,’ and I had to put up a second time. When he’d gone, the gents told me to begin again. I had scarcely spread my cloth when in comes the landlord again, in a towering rage, and shouts out, ‘What, at it again! Now you be off;’ so I said, ‘I only did it to oblige the company present, who were agreeable, and that I hadn’t yet finished my rum and water, which wasn’t paid for.’ ‘Not paid for?’ says he; ‘No,’ says I: ‘but I’m waiting here for a friend, and he’ll pay for it.’ You may imagine my feelings, without a penny in my pocket. ‘Don’t let me catch you at it again, or I’ll give you in charge,’ says he. Scarcely had he left again when the company began talking about it, and saying it was too bad to stop me; so one of them rings the bell, and when the landlord comes in he says, ‘Mr. Landlord, this young person has been very civil, and conducted himself in a highly respectable manner, and has certainly afforded us a great deal of amusement; now why should you object to his showing us some tricks?’ ‘Thank heavens,’ thought I to myself, ‘I’m saved, and the rum will be paid for.’ The landlord’s manner altered all of a sudden, and says he, ‘Oh, certainly, gentlemen! certainly! if it’s your wish, I don’t mind the young man’s being here; though I make it a rule to keep my parlour select.’ Then I set to work and did all my tricks comfortably, and I made a collection of 7s. 6d. Then I rang the bell like a lord, and I put down a shilling to pay for the rum and water, and saying, ‘Gentlemen, I’m very much obliged to you for your patronage,’ to which they replied, ‘Not at all, young man,’ I walked past the bar to leave. Then the landlord comes up to me and says, shaking his fist, and blue in the face with rage, ‘If ever I catch you here again, you d—— rogue, I’ll give you to a policeman.’ So, without more ado, I walks round to the other door, and enters the parlour again and tells the company, and they had in the landlord and blowed him well up. This will just show you the risks we have to run when out busking for a living, and what courage is wanted to speculate upon chances.

“There are very few conjurers out busking now. I don’t know above four; one of ’em has had the best chances in the world of getting on; but he’s a very uneducated man, and that has stood in his way, though he’s very clever, and pr’aps the best hand at the cups and balls of any man in England. For instance, once he was at a nobleman’s party, giving his entertainment, and he says such a thing as this:—‘You see, my lords and ladies, I have a tatur in this hand, and a tatur in that; now I shall pass ’em into this handkercher.’ Of course the nobleman said to himself, ‘Tatur! handkercher! why, who’s this feller?’ You may depend upon it he was never asked there any more; for every thing in a wizard’s business depends upon graceful action, and his style of delivery, so that he may make himself agreeable to the company.

“When a conjurer’s out busking, he may reckon upon making his 20s. a-week, taking the year round; pr’aps, some weeks, he won’t take more than 12s. or 15s.; but then, at other times, he may get 6s. or 8s. in one parlour alone, and I have taken as much as 1l. by teaching gentlemen how to do the tricks I had been performing. I have sometimes walked my twenty miles a-day, and busked at every parlour I came to, (for I never enter tap-rooms,) and come home with only 1s. 6d. in my pocket. I have been to Edmonton and back and only earned 1s., and then, pr’aps, at eleven the same night, when I was nearly done up, and quite dispirited with my luck, I’ve turned into one of the parlours in town and earned my 6s. in less than an hour, where I’d been twelve only earning one.”

STREET CONJURER PERFORMING.

This person came to me recommended by one of my street acquaintances as the “pluckiest fire-eater going,” and that as he was a little “down at heel,” he should be happy for a consideration to give me any information I might require in the “Salamander line.”

He was a tall, gaunt man, with an absent-looking face, and so pale that his dark eyes looked positively wild.

I could not help thinking, as I looked at his bony form, that fire was not the most nutritious food in the world, until the poor fellow explained to me that he had not broken his fast for two days.

He gave the following account of himself:—

“My father was a barber—a three-ha’penny one—and doing a good business, in Southwark. I used to assist him, lathering up the chins and shaving ’em—torturing, I called it. I was a very good light hand. You see, you tell a good shaver by the way he holds the razor, and the play from the wrist. All our customers were tradesmen and workmen, but father would never shave either coalheavers or fishermen, because they always threw down a penny, and said there was plenty of penny barbers, and they wouldn’t give no more. The old man always stuck up for his price to the day of his death. There was a person set up close to him for a penny, and that injured us awful. I was educated at St. George’s National and Parochial School, and I was a national lad, and wore my own clothes; but the parochials wore the uniform of blue bob-tailed coats, and a badge on the left side. When they wanted to make an appearance in the gallery of the church on charity-sermon days, they used to make all the nationals dress like the parochials, so as to swell the numbers up. I was too fond of entertainments to stick to learning, and I used to step it. Kennington common was my principal place. I used, too, to go to the outside of the Queen’s-bench and pick up the racket-balls as they was chucked over, and then sell them for three-ha’pence each. I got promoted from the outside to the inside; for, from being always about, they took me at threepence a-day, and gave me a bag of whitening to whiten the racket-balls. When I used to hop the wag from school I went there, which was three times a-week, which was the reg’lar racket-days. I used to spend my threepence in damaged fruit—have a pen’orth of damaged grapes or plums—or have a ha’porth of wafers from the confectioner’s. Ah, I’ve eat thousands and thousands of ha’porths. It’s a kind of a paste, but they stick like wafers—my father’s stuck a letter many a time with ’em. They goes at the bottom of the russetfees cake—ah, ratafees is the word.

“I got so unruly, and didn’t attend to school, so I was turned out, and then I went to help father and assist upon the customers. I was confined so in the shop, that I only stopped there three months, and then I run away. Then I had no home to go to, but I found a empty cart, situated in Red-cross-street, near the Borough-market, and there I slept for five nights. Then Greenwich fair came on. I went round the fair, and got assisting a artist as was a likeness-cutter, and had a booth, making black profiles. I assisted this man in building his booth, and he took a great fancy to me, and kept me as one of his own. He was a shoemaker as well, and did that when fair was over. I used to fetch his bristles and leather, and nuss the child. He lived near the Kent-road; and one day as I was going out for the leather, I fell upon mother, and she solaced me, and took me home; and then she rigged me out, and kept me, till I run away again; and that was when Greenwich fair came on again, for I wanted to go back then. At the fair I got to be doorsman and grease-pot boy inside a exhibition, to let the people out and keep the lamps. I got a shilling a-day for my attendance during fair time, and I travelled with them parties for five months. That was Peterson’s, the travelling comedian, or what we call a ‘mumming concern.’ When we got to Bexley, I thought I should like to see a piece called ‘Tricks and Trials,’ then being performed at the Surrey Theatre, so I cut away and come up to London again. There I got employment at a japanner, boiling up the stuff. I made a little bit of an appearance, and then I went home. I had learnt three or four comic songs, and I used to go singing at consart-rooms. I was a reg’lar professional. I went a busking at the free consart-rooms, and then go round with the cap. I principally sing ‘The Four-and-nine,’ or ‘The Dark Arches,’ or ‘The Ship’s Carpenter,’ and ‘The Goose Club.’

“It was at one of these free consart-rooms that I first saw a chap fire-eating. You see, at a free consart-room the professionals ain’t paid, no more do the audience to come in, but the performers are allowed to go round with a cap for their remuneration. They are the same as the cock-and-hen clubs. This fire-eater was of the name of West, and I know’d him afore, and he used to ask me to prepare the things for him. His performance was, he had a link a-light in his hand, and he used to take pieces off with a fork and eat it. Then he would get a plate with some sulphur, light it, place it under his nose, and inhale the fumes that rose from it; and then he used to eat it with a fork whilst a-light. After that he’d get a small portion of gunpowder, put it in the palm of his hand, and get a fusee to answer for a quick-match, to explode the powder, and that concluded the performance—only three tricks. I was stunned the first time I see him do it; but when I come to prepare the things for him, I got enlightened into the business. When his back was turned, I used to sniff at the sulphur on the sly. I found it rather hard, for the fumes used to get up your head, and reg’lar confuse you, and lose your memory. I kept on the singing at consarts, but I practised the fire-eating at home. I tried it for the matter of two months, before I found the art of it. It used to make me very thick in my voice; and if I began it before breakfast it used to make you feel ill: but I generally began it after meals. I tried the link and sulphur till I got perfect in these two. It blistered my mouth swallowing the fire, but I never burnt myself seriously at it.

“After I learnt those, I got travelling again with a man that swallowed a poker, of the name of Yates. One of his tricks was with tow. He’d get some, and then get a fryingpan, and he’d put the tow in the fire-pan, and he’d get some ground rosin and brimstone together and put them on top of the tow in the pan. Then, when he’d set light to it, he used to bring it on the outside of the show and eat it with a knife and fork, while I held the pan. I learnt how to do the trick; this was when he had done with it, and I’d take it away. Then I used to eat the portion that was left in the pan, till I became the master of that feat.

“When I left Yates I practised again at home until I was perfect, and then I went about doing the performance myself. The first place that I attempted was at the Fox and Cock, Gray’s-inn-lane, and I was engaged there at three shillings a-night, and with collections of what people used to throw to me I’d come away with about seven shillings and sixpence. I was very successful indeed, and I stopped there for about seven months, doing the fire-business; and I got another job at the same place, for one of the potmen turned dishonest, and the master gave me eight shillings a-week to do his work as well. I have continued ever since going to different concert-rooms, and giving my performances. My general demand for a night’s engagement is four shillings and six pen’orth of refreshment. When I perform I usually have a decanter of ale and two glasses upon the table, and after every trick I sit down whilst an overture is being done and wash my mouth out, for it gets very hot. You’re obliged to pause a little, for after tasting one thing, if the palate doesn’t recover, you can’t tell when the smoke is coming.

“I wore a regular dress, a kind of scale-armour costume, with a red lion on the breast. I do up my moustache with cork, and rouge a bit. My tights is brown, with black enamel jack-boots. On my head I wears a king’s coronet and a ringlet wig, bracelets on my wrists, and a red twill petticoat under the armour dress, where it opens on the limps.

“For my performances I begin with eating the lighted link, an ordinary one as purchased at oil-shops. There’s no trick in it, only confidence. It won’t burn you in the inside, but if the pitch falls on the outside, of course it will hurt you. If you hold your breath the moment the lighted piece is put in your mouth, the flame goes out on the instant. Then we squench the flame with spittle. As we takes a bit of link in the mouth, we tucks it on one side of the cheek, as a monkey do with nuts in his pouch. After I have eaten sufficient fire I take hold of the link, and extinguish the lot by putting the burning end in my mouth. Sometimes, when I makes a slip, and don’t put it in careful, it makes your moustache fiz up. I must also mind how I opens my mouth, ’cos the tar sticks to the lip wherever it touches, and pains sadly. This sore on my hand is caused by the melted pitch dropping on my fingers, and the sores is liable to be bad for a week or eight days. I don’t spit out my bits of link; I always swallow them. I never did spit ’em out, for they are very wholesome, and keeps you from having any sickness. Whilst I’m getting the next trick ready I chews them up and eats them. It tastes rather roughish, but not nasty when you’re accustomed to it. It’s only like having a mouthful of dust, and very wholesome.

“My next trick is with a piece of tow with a piece of tape rolled up in the interior. I begin to eat a portion of this tow—plain, not a-light—till I find a fitting opportunity to place the tape in the mouth. Then I pause for a time, and in the meantime I’m doing a little pantomime business—just like love business, serious—till I get the end of this tape between my teeth, and then I draws it out, supposed to be manufactured in the pit of the stomach. After that—which always goes immensely—I eat some more tow, and inside this tow there is what I call the fire-ball—that is, a lighted fusee bound round with tow and placed in the centre of the tow I’m eating—which I introduce at a fitting opportunity. Then I blows out with my breath, and that sends out smoke and fire. That there is a very hard trick, for it’s according how this here fire-ball bustes. Sometimes it bustes on the side, and then it burns all the inside of the mouth, and the next morning you can take out pretty well the inside of your mouth with your finger; but if it bustes near the teeth, then it’s all right, for there’s vent for it. I also makes the smoke and flame—that is, sparks—come down my nose, the same as coming out of a blacksmith’s chimney. It makes the eyes water, and there’s a tingling; but it don’t burn or make you giddy.

“My next trick is with the brimstone. I have a plate of lighted sulphur, and first inhale the fumes, and then devour it with a fork and swallow it. As a costermonger said when he saw me do it, ‘I say, old boy, your game ain’t all brandy.’ There’s a kind of a acid, nasty, sour taste in this feat, and at first it used to make me feel sick; but now I’m used to it, and it don’t. When I puts it in my mouth it clings just like sealing-wax, and forms a kind of a dead ash. Of a morning, if I haven’t got my breakfast by a certain time, there’s a kind of a retching in my stomach, and that’s the only inconvenience I feel from swallowing the sulphur for that there feat.

“The next is, with two sticks of sealing-wax and the same plate. They are lit by the gas and dropped on one another till they are bodily a-light. Then I borrow either a ring of the company, or a pencil-case, or a seal. I set the sealing-wax a-light with a fork, and I press the impression of whatever article I can get with the tongue, and the seal is passed round to the company. Then I finish eating the burning wax. I always spits that out after, when no one’s looking. The sealing-wax is all right if you get it into the interior of the mouth, but if it is stringy, and it falls, you can’t get it off, without it takes away skin and all. It has a very pleasant taste, and I always prefer the red, as it’s flavour is the best. Hold your breath and it goes out, but still the heat remains, and you can’t get along with that so fast as the sulphur. I often burn myself, especially when I’m bothered in my entertainment; such as any person talking about me close by, then I listen to ’em perhaps, and I’m liable to burn myself. I haven’t been able to perform for three weeks after some of my burnings. I never let any of the audience know anything of it, but smother up the pain, and go on with my other tricks.

“The other trick is a feat which I make known to the public as one of Ramo Samee’s, which he used to perform in public-houses and tap-rooms, and made a deal of money out of. With the same plate and a piece of dry tow placed in it, I have a pepper-box, with ground rosin and sulphur together. I light the tow, and with a knife and fork I set down to it and eat it, and exclaim, ‘This is my light supper.’ There isn’t no holding the breath so much in this trick as in the others, but you must get it into the mouth any how. It’s like eating a hot beef-steak when you are ravenous. The rosin is apt to drop on the flesh and cause a long blister. You see, we have to eat it with the head up, full-faced; and really, without it’s seen, nobody would believe what I do.

“There’s another feat, of exploding the gunpowder. There’s two ways of exploding it. This is my way of doing it, though I only does it for my own benefits and on grand occasions, for it’s very dangerous indeed to the frame, for it’s sure to destroy the hair of the head; or if anything smothers it, it’s liable to shatter a thumb or a limb.

“I have a man to wait on me for this trick, and he unloops my dress and takes it off, leaving the bare back and arms. Then I gets a quarter of a pound of powder, and I has an ounce put on the back part of the neck, in the hollow, and I holds out each arm with an orange in the palm of each hand, with a train along the arms, leading up to the neck. Then I turns my back to the audience, and my man fires the gunpowder, and it blew up in a minute, and ran down the train and blew up that in my hands. I’ve been pretty lucky with this trick, for it’s only been when the powder’s got under my bracelets, and then it hurts me. I’m obliged to hold the hand up, for if it hangs down it hurts awful. It looks like a scurvy, and as the new skin forms, the old one falls off.

“That’s the whole of my general performance for concert business, when I go busking at free concerts or outside of shows (I generally gets a crown a-day at fairs). I never do the gunpowder, but only the tow and the link.

“I have been engaged at the Flora Gardens, and at St. Helena Gardens, Rotherhithe, and then I was Signor Salamander, the great fire-king from the East-end theatres. At the Eel-pie-house, Peckham, I did the ‘terrific flight through the air,’ coming down a wire surrounded by fire-works. I was called Herr Alma, the flying fiend. There was four scaffold-poles placed at the top of the house to form a tower, just large enough for me to lie down on my belly, for the swivels on the rope to be screwed into the cradle round my body. A wire is the best, but they had a rope. On this cradle were places for the fire-works to be put in it. I had a helmet of fire on my head, and the three spark cases (they are made with steel-filings, and throw out sparks) made of Prince of Wales feathers. I had a sceptre in my hand of two serpents, and in their open mouths they put fire-balls, and they looked as if they was spitting fiery venom. I had wings, too, formed from the ankle to the waist. They was netting, and spangled, and well sized to throw off the fire. I only did this two nights, and I had ten shillings each performance. It’s a momentary feeling coming down, a kind of suffocation like, so that you must hold your breath. I had two men to cast me off. There was a gong first of all, knocked to attract the attention, and then I made my appearance. First, a painted pigeon, made of lead, is sent down the wire as a pilot. It has moveable wings. Then all the fire-works are lighted up, and I come down right through the thickest of ’em. There’s a trap-door set in the scene at the end, and two men is there to look after it. As soon as I have passed it, the men shut it, and I dart up against a feather-bed. The speed I come down at regularly jams me up against it, but you see I throw away this sceptre and save myself with my hands a little. I feel fagged for want of breath. It seems like a sudden fright, you know. I sit down for a few minutes, and then I’m all right.

“I’m never afraid of fire. There was a turner’s place that took fire, and I saved that house from being burned. He was a friend of mine, the turner was, and when I was there, the wife thought she heard the children crying, and asked me to go up and see what it was. As I went up I could smell fire worse and worse, and when I got in the room it was full of smoke, and all the carpet, and bed-hangings, and curtains smouldering. I opened the window, and the fire burst out, so I ups with the carpet and throw’d it out of window, together with the blazing chairs, and I rolled the linen and drapery up and throw’d them out. I was as near suffocated as possible. I went and felt the bed, and there was two children near dead from the smoke; I brought them down, and a medical man was called, and he brought them round.

“I don’t reckon no more than two other fire-kings in London beside myself. I only know of two, and I should be sure to hear of ’em if there were more. But they can only do three of the tricks, and I’ve got novelties enough to act for a fortnight, with fresh performances every evening. There’s a party in Drury-lane is willing to back me for five, fifteen, or twenty pounds, against anybody that will come and answer to it, to perform with any other man for cleanness and cleverness, and to show more variety of performance.

“I’m always at fire-eating. That’s how I entirely get my living, and I perform five nights out of the six. Thursday night is the only night, as I may say, I’m idle. Thursday night everybody’s fagged, that’s the saying—Got no money. Friday, there’s many large firms pays their men on, especially in Bermondsey.

“I’m out of an engagement now, and I don’t make more than eleven shillings a-week, because I’m busking; but when I’m in an engagement my money stands me about thirty-five shillings a-week, putting down the value of the drink as well—that is, what’s allowed for refreshment. Summer is the worst time for me, ’cos people goes to the gardens. In the winter season I’m always engaged three months out of the six. You might say, if you counts the overplus at one time, and minus at other time, that I makes a pound a-week. I know what it is to go to the treasury on a Saturday, and get my thirty shillings, and I know what it is to have the landlord come with his ‘Hallo! hallo! here’s three weeks due, and another week running on.’

“I was very hard up at one time—when I was living in Friar-street—and I used to frequent a house kept by a betting-man, near the St. George’s Surrey Riding-school. A man I knew used to supply this betting-man with rats. I was at this public-house one night when this rat-man comes up to me, and says he, ‘Hallo! my pippin; here, I want you: I want to make a match. Will you kill thirty rats against my dog?’ So I said, ‘Let me see the dog first;’ and I looked at his mouth, and he was an old dog; so I says, ‘No, I won’t go in for thirty; but I don’t mind trying at twenty.’ He wanted to make it twenty-four, but I wouldn’t. They put the twenty in the rat-pit, and the dog went in first and killed his, and he took a quarter of an hour and two minutes. Then a fresh lot were put in the pit, and I began; my hands were tied behind me. They always make an allowance for a man, so the pit was made closer, for you see a man can’t turn round like a dog; I had half the space of the dog. The rats lay in a cluster, and then I picked them off where I wanted ’em, and bit ’em between the shoulders. It was when they came to one or two that I had the work, for they cut about. The last one made me remember him, for he gave me a bite, of which I’ve got the scar now. It festered, and I was obliged to have it cut out. I took Dutch drops for it, and poulticed it by day, and I was bad for three weeks. They made a subscription in the room of fifteen shillings for killing these rats. I won the match, and beat the dog by four minutes. The wager was five shillings, which I had. I was at the time so hard up, I’d do anything for some money; though, as far as that’s concerned, I’d go into a pit now, if anybody would make it worth my while.”

He was quite a young man, and, judging from his countenance, there was nothing that could account for his having taken up so strange a method of gaining his livelihood as that of swallowing snakes.

He was very simple in his talk and manner. He readily confessed that the idea did not originate with him, and prided himself only on being the second to take it up. There is no doubt that it was from his being startled by the strangeness and daringness of the act that he was induced to make the essay. He said he saw nothing disgusting in it; that people liked it; that it served him well in his “professional” engagements; and spoke of the snake in general as a reptile capable of affection, not unpleasant to the eye, and very cleanly in its habits.

“I swallow snakes, swords, and knives; but, of course, when I’m engaged at a penny theatre I’m expected to do more than this, for it would only take a quarter of an hour, and that isn’t long enough for them. They call me in the perfession a ‘Sallementro,’ and that is what I term myself; though p’raps it’s easier to say I’m a ‘swallower.’

“It was a mate of mine that I was with that first put me up to sword-and-snake swallowing. I copied off him, and it took me about three months to learn it. I began with a sword first—of course not a sharp sword, but one blunt-pointed—and I didn’t exactly know how to do it, for there’s a trick in it. I see him, and I said, ‘Oh, I shall set up master for myself, and practise until I can do it.’

“At first it turned me, putting it down my throat past my swallow, right down—about eighteen inches. It made my swallow sore—very sore, and I used lemon and sugar to cure it. It was tight at first, and I kept pushing it down further and further. There’s one thing, you mustn’t cough, and until you’re used to it you want to very bad, and then you must pull it up again. My sword was about three-quarters of an inch wide.

“At first I didn’t know the trick of doing it, but I found it out this way. You see the trick is, you must oil the sword—the best sweet oil, worth fourteen pence a pint—and you put it on with a sponge. Then, you understand, if the sword scratches the swallow it don’t make it sore, ’cos the oil heals it up again. When first I put the sword down, before I oiled it, it used to come up quite slimy, but after the oil it slips down quite easy, is as clean when it comes up as before it went down.

“As I told you, we are called at concert-rooms where I perform the ‘Sallementro.’ I think it’s French, but I don’t know what it is exactly; but that’s what I’m called amongst us.

“The knives are easier to do than the sword because they are shorter. We puts them right down till the handle rests on the mouth. The sword is about eighteen inches long, and the knives about eight inches in the blade. People run away with the idea that you slip the blades down your breast, but I always hold mine right up with the neck bare, and they see it go into the mouth atween the teeth. They also fancy it hurts you; but it don’t, or what a fool I should be to do it. I don’t mean to say it don’t hurt you at first, ’cos it do, for my swallow was very bad, and I couldn’t eat anything but liquids for two months whilst I was learning. I cured my swallow whilst I was stretching it with lemon and sugar.

“I was the second one that ever swallowed a snake. I was about seventeen or eighteen years old when I learnt it. The first was Clarke as did it. He done very well with it, but he wasn’t out no more than two years before me, so he wasn’t known much. In the country there is some places where, when you do it, they swear you are the devil, and won’t have it nohow.

“The snakes I use are about eighteen inches long, and you must first cut the stingers out, ’cos it might hurt you. I always keep two or three by me for my performances. I keep them warm, but the winter kills ’em. I give them nothing to eat but worms or gentles. I generally keep them in flannel, or hay, in a box. I’ve three at home now.

“When first I began swallowing snakes they tasted queer like. They draw’d the roof of the mouth a bit. It’s a roughish taste. The scales rough you a bit when you draw them up. You see, a snake will go into ever such a little hole, and they are smooth one way.

“The head of the snake goes about an inch and a half down the throat, and the rest of it continues in the mouth, curled round like. I hold him by the tail, and when I pinch it he goes right in. You must cut the stinger out or he’ll injure you. The tail is slippery, but you nip it with the nails like pinchers. If you was to let him go, he’d go right down; but most snakes will stop at two inches down the swallow, and then they bind like a ball in the mouth.

“I in generally get my snakes by giving little boys ha’pence to go and catch ’em in the woods. I get them when I’m pitching in the country. I’ll get as many as I can get, and bring ’em up to London for my engagements.

“When first caught the snake is slimy, and I have to clean him by scraping him off with the finger-nail as clean as I can, and then wiping him with a cloth, and then with another, until he’s nice and clean. I have put ’em down slimy, on purpose to taste what it was like. It had a nasty taste with it—very nasty.

“I give a man a shilling always to cut the stinger out—one that knows all about it, for the stinger is under the tongue. It was this Clark I first see swallow a snake. He swallowed it as it was when he caught it, slimy. He said it was nasty. Then he scraped it with his nail and let it crawl atween his hands, cleaning itself. When once they are cleaned of the slime they have no taste. Upon my word they are clean things, a’most like metal. They only lives on worms, and that ain’t so nasty; besides, they never makes no mess in the box, only frothing in the mouth at morning and evening: but I don’t know what comes from ’em, for I ain’t a doctor.

“When I exhibit, I first holds the snake up in the air and pinches the tail, to make it curl about and twist round my arm, to show that he is alive. Then I holds it above my mouth, and as soon as he sees the hole in he goes. He goes wavy-like, as a ship goes,—that’s the comparison. You see, a snake will go in at any hole. I always hold my breath whilst his head is in my swallow. When he moves in the swallow, it tickles a little, but it don’t make you want to retch. In my opinion he is more glad to come up than to go down, for it seems to be too hot for him. I keep him down about two minutes. If I breathe or cough, he draws out and curls back again. I think there’s artfulness in some of them big snakes, for they seem to know which is the master. I was at Wombwell’s menagerie of wild beasts for three months, and I had the care of a big snake, as thick round as my arm. I wouldn’t attempt to put that one down my throat, I can tell you, for I think I might easier have gone down his’n. I had to show it to the people in front of the carriages to draw ’em in, at fair time. I used to hold it up in both hands, with my arms in the air. Many a time it curled itself three or four times round my neck and about my body, and it never even so much as squeeged me the least bit. I had the feeding on it, and I used to give it the largest worms I could find. Mr. Wombwell has often said to me, ‘It’s a dangerous game you’re after, and if you don’t give the snake plenty of worms and make it like you, it’ll nip you some of these times.’ I’m sure the snake know’d me. I was very partial to it, too. It was a furren snake, over spots, called a boa-constructor. It never injured me, though I’m told it is uncommon powerful, and can squeege a man up like a sheet of paper, and crack his bones as easy as a lark’s. I’m tremendous courageous, nothing frightens me; indeed, I don’t know what it is to be afraid.

“The one I was speaking of I have often held up in the air in both hands, and it was more than four yards long, and let it curl round my neck in five or six twirls. It was a boa-constructor, and I believe it know’d me, and that’s why it didn’t hurt me, for I feed him. He had nothing but long great worms, and he grew to know me.

“My performance with the snake is always very successful. The women is frightened at first, but they always stop to see, and only hide their eyes. There’s no danger as long as you keep hold.

“I generally perform at concert-rooms, and penny theatres, and cheap circuses, and all round the country, such as in the street, or at farm-houses, or in tap-rooms. I have done it in the streets of London too, and then I’m dressed-up in fleshing tights, skin dress, and trunks. I carry the snake in a box. When I swallow it some holloa out, ‘O my God, don’t do that!’ but when I’m finished, they say, ‘It’s hardly wonderful to be believed,’ and give money.

“I generally mix up the sword-and-snake performances with my other ones; and it’s the same in the streets.

“Sometimes I go out to tap-rooms in my every-day dress, with the snake in my pocket, and a sword. Then I go and offer to show my performance. First I’ll do some tumbling, and throw a somerset over a table. Then I takes out the snake and say, ‘Gentlemen, I shall now swallow a live snake, anybody is at liberty to feel it.’ I have—according to the company, you know—made such a thing as five shillings, or one shilling and sixpence, or whatever it may be, by snake-swallowing alone.

“I’m the only one in London who can swallow a snake. There’s nobody else besides me. It requires great courage. I’ve great courage. One night I was sleeping in a barn at a public-house, called the Globe, at Lewes, seven miles from Brighton. A woman who had cut her throat used to haunt the place. Well, I saw her walking about in a long white shroud, the doors opening and shutting before her. A man who was in the room with us jumped up in his bed and cried, ‘Tumblers!’

“I must tell you one thing before you finish, just to prove what tremendous courage I’ve got. I was out showing the sword-and-snake swallowing in the country, and I travelled down to near Lewes, which is seven miles from Brighton, and there I put up at a house called the Falcon. We slept in a barn, and at night, when all was asleep except myself, I see a figure all in white come into the room with her throat cut, and her face as white as chalk. I knowed she was a apperition, ’cos I’d been told the house was haunted by such. Well, in she come, and she stopped and looked at me, seeing that I was awake. The perspiration poured out of me like a shower; but I warn’t afeard, I’ve that courage. I says, ‘God help me!’ for I knew I’d done no harm as I could call to mind; so I hadn’t no fear of ghosts and such-like spirits. No, I’m certain it wern’t no fancy of mine, ’cos others see it as well as me. There was a mate in the same room, and he woke up and sees the ghosts, and up he jumps in bed and cries out: ‘Tumblers! Tumblers! here’s a woman haunting us!’ I told him to lie down and go to sleep, and hold his noise. Then I got out of bed, and it wanished past me, close as could be,—as near as I am to this table. The door opened itself to let her out, and then closed again. I didn’t feel the air cold like, nor nothing, nor was there any smell or anythink. I’m sure I wasn’t dreaming, ’cos I knows pretty well when I’m awake. Besides the doors kept bouncing open, and then slamming-to again for more than an hour, and woke everybody in the room. This kept on till one o’clock. Yet, you see, though the sweat run down me to that degree I was wetted through, yet I had that courage I could get out of bed to see what the spirit was like. I said, ‘God help me! for I’ve done no harm as I knows of,’ and that give me courage.”

Whilst the “Salamentro” told me this ghost story, he spoke it in a half voice, like that of a nervous believer in such things. When he had finished he seemed to have something on his mind, for after a moment’s silence he said, in a confidential tone, “Between ourselves, sir, I’m a Jew.” I then asked him if he thought the ghost was aware of it, and had visited him on that account, and the following was his reply: “Well, it ain’t unlikely; for, you see, some of our scholars know what to say to the poor things, and they know what to do to rest ’em. Now, pr’aps she thought I knew these secrets,—but, I’m no scholard—for, you see, we Jews always carry prayers about with us to keep off evil spirits. That’s one reason why I was so bold as to go up to her.”

He was a melancholy-looking man, with the sunken eyes and other characteristics of semi-starvation, whilst his face was scored with lines and wrinkles, telling of paint and premature age.

I saw him performing in the streets with a school of acrobats soon after I had been questioning him, and the readiness and business-like way with which he resumed his professional buffoonery was not a little remarkable. His story was more pathetic than comic, and proved that the life of a street clown is, perhaps, the most wretched of all existence. Jest as he may in the street, his life is literally no joke at home.

“I have been a clown for sixteen years,” he said, “having lived totally by it for that time. I was left motherless at two years of age, and my father died when I was nine. He was a carman, and his master took me as a stable-boy, and I stayed with him until he failed in business. I was then left destitute again, and got employed as a supernumerary at Astley’s, at one shilling a-night. I was a ‘super’ some time, and got an insight into theatrical life. I got acquainted, too, with singing people, and could sing a good song, and came out at last on my own account in the streets, in the Jim Crow line. My necessities forced me into a public line, which I am far from liking. I’d pull trucks at one shilling a-day, rather than get twelve shillings a-week at my business. I’ve tried to get out of the line. I’ve got a friend to advertise for me for any situation as groom. I’ve tried to get into the police, and I’ve tried other things, but somehow there seems an impossibility to get quit of the street business. Many times I have to play the clown, and indulge in all kinds of buffoonery, with a terrible heavy heart. I have travelled very much, too, but I never did over-well in the profession. At races I may have made ten shillings for two or three days, but that was only occasional; and what is ten shillings to keep a wife and family on, for a month maybe? I have three children, one now only eight weeks old. You can’t imagine, sir, what a curse the street business often becomes, with its insults and starvations. The day before my wife was confined, I jumped and labour’d doing Jim Crow for twelve hours—in the wet, too—and earned one shilling and threepence; with this I returned to a home without a bit of coal, and with only half-a-quartern loaf in it. I know it was one shilling and threepence; for I keep a sort of log of my earnings and my expenses; you’ll see on it what I’ve earn’d as clown, or the funnyman, with a party of acrobats, since the beginning of this year.”

He showed me this log, as he called it, which was kept in small figures, on paper folded up as economically as possible. His latest weekly earnings were, 12s. 6d., 1s. 10d., 7s. 7d., 2s. 5d., 3s. 11½d., 7s. 7½d., 7s. 9¼d., 6s. 4½d., 10s. 10½d., 9s. 7d., 6s. 1½d., 15s. 6¼d., 6s. 5d., 4s. 2d., 12s. 10¼d., 15s. 5½d., 14s. 4d. Against this was set off what the poor man had to expend for his dinner, &c., when out playing the clown, as he was away from home and could not dine with his family. The ciphers intimate the weeks when there was no such expense, or in other words, those which had been passed without dinner. 0, 0, 0, 0, 2s. 2½d., 3s. 9¼d., 4s. 2d., 4s. 5d., 5s. 8¼d., 5s. 11¼d., 4s. 10½d., 2s. 8¾d., 3s. 7¾d., 3s. 4¼d., 6s. 5¼d., 4s. 6¾d., 4s. 3d. This account shows an average of 8s. 6½d. a-week as the gross gain, whilst, if the expenses be deducted, not quite six shillings remain as the average weekly sum to be taken home to wife and family.

“I dare say,” continued the man, “that no persons think more of their dignity than such as are in my way of life. I would rather starve than ask for parochial relief. Many a time I have gone to my labour without breaking my fast, and played clown until I could raise dinner. I have to make jokes as clown, and could fill a volume with all I knows.”

He told me several of his jests; they were all of the most venerable kind, as for instance:—“A horse has ten legs: he has two fore legs and two hind ones. Two fores are eight, and two others are ten.” The other jokes were equally puerile, as, “Why is the City of Rome,” (he would have it Rome), “like a candle wick? Because it’s in the midst of Greece.” “Old and young are both of one age: your son at twenty is young, and your horse at twenty is old: and so old and young are the same.” “The dress,” he continued, “that I wear in the streets consists of red striped cotton stockings, with full trunks, dotted red and black. The body, which is dotted like the trunks, fits tight like a woman’s gown, and has full sleeves and frills. The wig or scalp is made of horse-hair, which is sown on to a white cap, and is in the shape of a cock’s comb. My face is painted with dry white lead. I grease my skin first and then dab the white paint on (flake-white is too dear for us street clowns); after that I colour my cheeks and mouth with vermilion. I never dress at home; we all dress at public-houses. In the street where I lodge, only a very few know what I do for a living. I and my wife both strive to keep the business a secret from our neighbours. My wife does a little washing when able, and often works eight hours for sixpence. I go out at eight in the morning and return at dark. My children hardly know what I do. They see my dresses lying about, but that is all. My eldest is a girl of thirteen. She has seen me dressed at Stepney fair, where she brought me my tea (I live near there); she laughs when she sees me in my clown’s dress, and wants to stay with me: but I would rather see her lay dead before me (and I had two dead in my place at one time, last Whitsun Monday was a twelvemonth) than she should ever belong to my profession.”

I could see the tears start from the man’s eyes as he said this.

“Frequently when I am playing the fool in the streets, I feel very sad at heart. I can’t help thinking of the bare cupboards at home; but what’s that to the world? I’ve often and often been at home all day when it has been wet, with no food at all, either to give my children or take myself, and have gone out at night to the public-houses to sing a comic song or play the funnyman for a meal—you may imagine with what feelings for the part—and when I’ve come home I’ve call’d my children up from their beds to share the loaf I had brought back with me. I know three or more clowns as miserable and bad off as myself. The way in which our profession is ruined is by the stragglers or outsiders, who are often men who are good tradesmen. They take to the clown’s business only at holiday or fair time, when there is a little money to be picked up at it, and after that they go back to their own trades; so that, you see, we, who are obliged to continue at it the year through, are deprived of even the little bit of luck we should otherwise have. I know only of another regular street clown in London besides myself. Some schools of acrobats, to be sure, will have a comic character of some kind or other, to keep the pitch up; that is, to amuse the people while the money is being collected: but these, in general, are not regular clowns. They are mostly dressed and got up for the occasion. They certainly don’t do anything else but the street comic business, but they are not pantomimists by profession. The street clowns generally go out with dancers and tumblers. There are some street clowns to be seen with the Jacks-in-the-greens; but they are mostly sweeps, who have hired their dress for the two or three days, as the case may be. I think there are three regular clowns in the metropolis, and one of these is not a professional: he never smelt the sawdust, I know, sir. The most that I have known have been shoemakers before taking to the business. When I go out as a street clown, the first thing I do is a comic medley dance; and then after that I crack a few jokes, and that is the whole of my entertainment. The first part of the medley dance is called ‘the good St. Anthony’ (I was the first that ever danced the polka in the streets); then I do a waltz, and wind up with a hornpipe. After that I go through a little burlesque business. I fan myself, and one of the school asks me whether I am out of breath? I answer, ‘No, the breath is out of me.’ The leading questions for the jokes are all regularly prepared beforehand. The old jokes always go best with our audiences. The older they are, the better for the streets. I know, indeed, of nothing new in the joking way; but even if there was, and it was in anyway deep, it would not do for the public thoroughfares. I have read a great deal of ‘Punch,’ but the jokes are nearly all too high there; indeed, I can’t say I think very much of them myself. The principal way in which I’ve got up my jokes is through associating with other clowns. We don’t make our jokes ourselves; in fact, I never knew one clown who did. I must own that the street clowns like a little drop of spirits, and occasionally a good deal. They are in a measure obligated to it. I can’t fancy a clown being funny on small beer; and I never in all my life knew one who was a teetotaller. I think such a person would be a curious character, indeed. Most of the street clowns die in the workhouses. In their old age they are generally very wretched and poverty-stricken. I can’t say what I think will be the end of me. I daren’t think of it, sir.”

A few minutes afterwards I saw this man dressed as Jim Crow, with his face blackened, dancing and singing in the streets as if he was the lightest-hearted fellow in all London.

The “professional” from whom I elicited my knowledge of penny-gaff clowning is known among his companions as “Funny Billy.” He appeared not a little anxious to uphold the dignity of the penny theatre, frequently assuring me that “they brought things out there in a style that would astonish some of the big houses.” His whole being seemed wrapped up in these cheap dramatic saloons, and he told me wonderful stories of first-class actors at “The Effingham,” or of astonishing performers at “The Bower,” or “Rotunda.” He was surprised, too, that the names of several of the artistes there were not familiar to me, and frequently pressed me to go and see so-and-so’s “Beadle,” or hear so-and-so sing his “Oh! don’t I like my Father!”

Besides being a clown, my informant was also “an author,” and several of the most successful ballets, pantomimes, and dramas, that of late years have been brought out at the City gaffs, have, I was assured, proceeded from “his pen.”

In build, even in his every-day clothes, he greatly resembles a clown—perhaps from the broadness of his chest and high-buttoned waistcoat, or from the shortness and crookedness of his legs; but he was the first I had seen whose form gave any indication of his calling.

Since the beginning of this year (1856) he has given up clowning, and taken to pantalooning instead, for “on last boxing-day,” he informed me, “he met with an accident which dislocated his jaw, and caused a swelling in his cheek as if he had an apple inside his mouth.” This he said he could conceal in his make-up as a pantaloon, but it had ruined him for clown.

His statement was as follows:—

“I’m a clown at penny gaffs and the cheap theatres, for some of the gaffs are twopence and threepence—that’s as high as they run. The Rotunda in the Blackfriars’-road is the largest in London, and that will hold one thousand comfortably seated, and they give two in one evening, at one penny, twopence, and threepence, and a first-class entertainment it is, consisting of a variety of singing and dancing, and ballets, from one hour and a-half to two hours. There are no penny theatres where speaking is legally allowed, though they do do it to a great extent, and at all of ’em at Christmas a pantomime is played, at which Clown and Pantaloon speaks.

“The difference between a penny-gaff clown and a fair, or, as we call it, a canvas clown, is this,—at the fairs the principal business is outside on the parade, and there’s very little done (seldom more than two scenes) inside. Now at the penny gaffs they go through a regular pantomime, consisting of from six to eight scenes, with jumps and all complete, as at a regular theatre; so that to do clown to one of them, you must be equal to those that come out at the regular theatres; and what’s more, you must strain every nerve; and what’s more still, you may often please at a regular theatre when you won’t go down at all at a penny gaff. The circus clown is as different from a penny-gaff clown as a coster is from a tradesman.

“What made me turn clown was this. I was singing comic songs at the Albion Saloon, Whitechapel, and playing in ballets, and doing the scene-painting. Business was none of the best. Mr. Paul Herring, the celebrated clown, was introduced into the company as a draw, to play ballets. The ballet which he selected was ‘The Barber and Beadle;’ and me being the only one who played the old men on the establishment, he selected me to play the Beadle to his Barber. He complimented me for what I had done, when the performance was over, for I done my uttermost to gain his applause, knowing him to be such a star, and what he said was—I think—deserved. We played together ballets for upwards of nine months, as well as pantomimes, in which I done the Pantaloon; and we had two clear benefits between us, in which we realised three pounds each, on both occasions. Then Mr. Paul Herring was engaged by Mr. Jem Douglass, of the Standard, to perform with the great clown, Mr. Tom Matthews, for it was intended to have two clowns in the piece. He having to go to the Standard for the Christmas, left about September, and we was without a clown, and it was proposed that I should play the clown. I accepted the offer, at a salary of thirty-five shillings a-week, under Hector Simpson, the great pantomimist—who was proprietor. This gentleman was well known as the great dog-and-bear man of Covent Garden, and various other theatres, where he played Valentine and Orson with a living bear. He showed me various things that I were deficient in, and with what I knew myself we went on admiringly well; and I continued at it as clown for upwards of a year, and became a great favourite.

“I remember clowning last Christmas (1856) particularly, for it was a sad year for me, and one of the busiest times I have ever known. I met with my accident then. I was worked to death. First of all, I had to do my rehearsals; then I had the scene-painting to go on with, which occupied me night and day, and what it brought me in was three shillings a-day and three shillings a-night. The last scene, equal to a pair of flats, was only given to me to do on Christmas-eve, to accomplish by the boxing-day. I got them done by five o’clock at Christmas morning, and then I had to go home and complete my dress, likewise my little boy’s, who was engaged to sing and play in ballets at two shillings a-night; and he was only five years old, but very clever at singing, combating, and ballet performing, as also the illustrations of the Grecian statues, which he first done when he was two and a half years old.

“The pantomime was the original Statue Blanche, as performed by Joe Grimaldi, as Mr. Hector Simpson had produced it—for it was under his superintendence—at Covent Garden Theatre. It’s title was, ‘The Statue Blanche, or Harlequin and the Magic Cross.’ I was very successful on the boxing-night, but on the second occasion of my acting in it I received an accident, which laid me up for three months, and I was not off my bed for ten weeks.

“I had, previous to this, played clown very often, especially on the Saturday evenings, for the Jews, for I was a great favourite with them; so far, that I knew they would go far and near to serve me. I had performed in ‘Harlequin Blue Beard,’ and ‘Harlequin Merry Milliners, or The Two Pair of Lovers,’ and several others, from eight to ten of them; but that was during the summer season. But I had never had a chance of coming out at Christmas before, and to me it was quite an event, and there’s no doubt I should have prospered in it only for my accident.

“This accident was occasioned by this. During the comic scene—the scene of the stripping of the child—they allowed an inexperienced person to play the part of the Beadle, and the doll for the child was stuffed with oak sawdust, and weighed twenty-six pounds. He took it up by the leg and struck me a blow in the face, which dislocated the jaw-bone, and splintered it all to pieces. I went through the pantomime with the remnants of the broken jaw still in my face, having then four hours to perform, for we played sixteen houses that boxing-day, to upwards of from three to four thousand people, and we began at half-past eleven in the day, and terminated at twelve at night. I had met with great approbation the whole of the time, and it was a sad event for me. It was quite accidental was my accident, and of course I bore the man no malice for one, but more blamed the manager for letting him come on.

“When I had done that night, after my blow, I felt very fatigued, and my face was very sore. I was completely jaw-locked, and I imagined I had caught a cold. It hurt me awfully every time I closed my teeth, but I drowned my feelings in a little brandy, and so forth; and the next night I resumed my clowning. After I had done that evening, I found I was so very bad I could hardly move; and going home with my wife and children, I was obliged to sit down every other yard I took, which occupied me very near two hours to do the mile and a quarter. I went to bed, and never got up again for ten weeks, for it brought on fever again. Ah! what I have suffered, God, and God only, knows! When the doctor came, he said I were under a very severe fever, and he thought I had caught a cold, and that I had the erysiphilas, my face being so swollen that it hung on my shoulders as they propped me up with pillows. He knew nothing about it. He made ’em bathe my face with poppy-heads, and wash my mouth out with honey, which drove me out of my mind, for I was a fortnight deranged. My wife told me, that whilst I was mad I had behaved very ill to her—poor thing!—for I wouldn’t let anybody come near me but her; and when she’d come I’d seize her by the hair, and fancy she was the man who had broke my jaw; and once I near strangled her. I was mad, you know. Ah! what I suffered then, nobody knows. Through that accident my wife and children has had many a time to go without victuals. Everything was sold then to keep me from the workhouse—even my poor little children’s frocks. My poor wife saved my life, if anybody did, for three doctors gave me up. I don’t believe they knew what I had. The teeth was loose, but the mouth was closed, and I couldn’t open it. They thought I had an abscess there, and they cut me three or four times in the neck to open the gathering. At last they found out the jaw-bone was smashed. When I got better, the doctor told me he could do nothing for me, but give me a letter to Dr. Fergusson, at the King’s College Hospital. I went to him, and he examined and probed the jaw through the incision under the gland of the neck, and then he said he must take the jaw out. I said I would consult my friends and hear what they said first; and with the idea of such an operation, and being so weak, I actually fainted down in the passage as I was leaving.

“Ah! fancy my distress to make such a hit, and everybody to compliment me as they did, and to see a prospect of almost coining money, and then suddenly to be thrown over, and be told it was either life or death for me!

“I wouldn’t undergo the operation. So I went home, and here comes fortitude. I pulled out the teeth with a pair of cobbler’s pincers, and cut open my face with a penknife to take out the bits of bone. If I hadn’t been a prudent, sober man, I should have died through it.

“There was a friend of mine who was like a brother to me, and he stuck to me every inch. There was lots of professionals I had supported in their illness, and they never come near me; only my dear friend, and but for him I should have died, for he saved up his money to get me port wine and such things.

“Many a time I’ve gone out when I was better to sing comic songs at concerts, when I could feel the bits of bone jangling in my mouth. But, sir, I had a wife and family, and they wanted food. As it was, my poor wife had to go to the workhouse to be confined. At one time I started off to do away with myself. I parted with my wife and children, and went to say good-by to my good friend, and it was he who saved my life. If it hadn’t been for him it would have been a gooser with me, for I was prepared to finish all. He walked about with me and reasoned me out of it, and says he, ‘What on earth will become of the wife and the children?’

“I’m sufficiently well now to enable me to resume my old occupation, not as Clown but as Pantaloon.

“Altogether—taking it all in all—I was three years as clown, and very successful and a great favourite with the Jews. My standing salary for comic singing and clown was eighteen shillings a-week; but then at Christmas it was always rose to thirty shillings or thirty-five shillings. Then I did the writing and painting, such as the placards for the outside; such as, ‘This saloon is open this evening,’ and such-like; and that, on the average, would bring me in eight shillings a-week.

“There was seven men and three females in my company when we played ‘Harlequin Blue Beard,’ for that’s the one I shall describe to you, and that we played for a considerable time. I was manager at the time, and I always was liked by the company, for I never fined them or anything like that; for, you see, I knew that to take sixpence from a poor man was to take a loaf of bread from the children.

“This pantomime was of my own writing, and I managed the chorus and the dances, and all. I painted the scenery, too, and moulded the masks—about six altogether—and then afterwards played clown. All this was included in my salary of eighteen shillings a-week, and that was the top price of the company.

“The first scene was with a cottage on the left hand and with the surrounding country in the back; three rows of waters, with the distant view of Blue Beard’s castle. Enters the lover (he’s the Harlequin) in a disguise dressed as a Turk; he explains in the pantomime that he should like to make the lady in the cottage his bride (which is Fatima, and afterwards Columbine). He goes to the cottage and knocks three times, when she appears at the window. She comes out and dances with him. At the end of the dance the old man comes in, to the tune of ‘Roast Beef of Old England.’ He wears a big mask, and is the father to Fatima, and afterwards Pantaloon. He drives lover off stage, and is about to take Fatima back to cottage, when castle gates at back opens and discovers Blue Beard in gondola, which crosses the stage in the waters. Blue Beard wears a mask and a tremendous long sword, which takes two men to pull out. He’s afterwards Clown, and I played the part.

“Several other gondolas cross stage, and when the last goes off the chorus begins in the distance, and increases as it approaches, and is thus:

“Then comes Blue Beard’s march, and enter troops, followed by Shackaback in a hurry. He’s Blue Beard’s servant. He bears on his shoulder an immense key, which he places in the middle of stage. He then comes to the front with a scroll, which he exhibits, on which is written:

At which they all become alarmed, and in an immense hurry of music enters Blue Beard majestically. He sings, to the tune of ‘The Low-back Car:’

“The lover from the side says:

“Then Blue Beard looks round fiercely, and his mask is made with eyes to work with strings:

(and he opens a tremendous pair of saucer eyes),

Then the music goes ‘Ha! ha!’ As he draws his sword into the army of four men, Shackaback gets it on the nose.

“Then Blue Beard goes direct to the old man and embraces him, and shows him a big purse of money. He then goes to the young lady, but she refuses him, and says she would sooner wed the young trooper. The old man gets in a rage, when enters Demon unseen by all; he waves over their heads; they then catch hold of hands and dance round the key again, to the tune of ‘The Roast Beef of Old England.’ Then begins a chorus which is thus, to the tune of ‘Stoney Batter:’

(Fairies from the side:)

(Others:)

“After dancing round key, Blue Beard orders two of the troops to seize the girl and carry her to the castle. Then they catch hands and begin singing, to the time of ‘Fine Young Bachelors:’

“And the scene closes on this. Then the lover just crosses, so as to give time to arrange the back scene. He vows vengeance on Blue Beard. Then scene opens, and discovers a chamber with Fatima on couch, and Demon behind with a large heart, on the scene over which is in illuminated letters:

The large key is placed at the foot of the couch on which she is laying. We don’t introduce the haunted chamber scenes, as it would have been too lengthened; but it was supposed that she had been there and examined it, and terror had overcome her and she had swooned. That’s when the audience sees her. We couldn’t do all the story at a penny gaff, it was too long. To return to the plot.

“Enter Fairy, who dances round the stage, and sees the heart. She goes and snatches the dagger; then a loud crash, and the key falls to pieces on the stage.

“I had five shillings given me as a present for that scene, for I had painted the scene all arches, and round every pillar was a serpent with fire coming from the mouth. I produced that pantomime, so that altogether it did not cost thirty shillings, because each man found his own dress, don’t you see.

“After the crash enters Blue Beard. He says the lady has broken the key, and he is about to kill her; when enter lover, and he has a terrific combat, in which they never hit a blow (like a phantom-fight); but the lover is about to be struck to the ground, when enters Fairy, who speaks these words:

“Then the scene falls, and discovers a fairy palace at back, with fairies, who sing:

“They all look dismayed at one another, and go to the sides ready for changing their dresses for the comic work.

“The Fairy Queen then says:

“And turning to the lady she adds:

“Turning to Blue Beard:

“Then Clown comes forward, and cries: ‘Halla! ha, ha, ha! here we are! Shobbus is out;’ (that’s the Jewish Sunday); and, oh dear! how they used to laugh at that!

“Then she turns to the old man:

“Then as she’s going off she says:

“Then the fairies sing:

“Then there is blue fire, and the scene closes, and the comic business begins.

“Clown dances first with Harlequin, and at the end of trip hollars out: ‘Ha, here we are!’ Then he sings out, each time Harlequin beats him, ‘A, E, I,’ (Pantaloon drops in and gets a blow, O!); and Clown says, ‘Tuppence! all right, you owe me nothing; I shan’t give you no change.’

“Then there’s a photography scene, and Clown comes on and says, ‘Here, I say, what shall we do for a living?’ Then Pantaloon says, ‘We’ll become dancing-masters.’ The Clown says, ‘They’ll take likenesses.’

“‘Ah, here’s somebody coming!’

“Enter a swell with white ducks, and a blacking-boy follows, says, ‘Clean your boots, sir?’ Clown asks him to clean his. As the boy is beginning, Harlequin bangs him, and he knocks the boy over. Next bang he gets he hits Pantaloon, and says he did it. Pantaloon says, ‘I never touched you;’ and Clown replies, ‘Then don’t do it again.’ Then I’d give ’em a rub up on the smoking mania. I’d say to boy, ‘Here, boy, take this farden to get yourself a pipe of tobacco, little boys is fond of smoking;’ and Pantaloon would add, ‘Yes, men’s left off.’ Boy goes off to buy the tobacco, and leaves his blacking-box, which Clown promises to take care of and clean the boots. He hollows out, ‘Clean your boots?’ and Pantaloon puts his foot down, and gets his toes rapped. Enter a lady, who asks where she can have her portrait taken,—Yes, marm; over there,—Clown steals parcel. When lady is gone, Clown discovers parcel to contain blank cards. This is what he takes the portraits on, and it was at a time when they was all the rage at a shilling. Clown then says, he’s taking portraits, and makes a camera out of the blacking-box. He cuts a hole in the box, and sticks the blacking-bottle for a lens. Then he places the box on Pantaloon’s back for a stand. Then, of course, Clown knocks him over, and he asks what that’s for. ‘Why, if you’re a stand, what do you fall for? I never see such a stand.’ Then ladies and gentlemen come in to have their portraits taken, and Clown smears the cards with blacking and gives it, and asks a shilling; when they grumble and won’t pay, he rubs the blacking in their faces. General row, and the scene changes to a street-scene. There’s another trip by Harlequin and Columbine, and enters Clown in a hurry with six fish, and he meets Pantaloon. ‘Look’ee here, what I’ve found!’ ‘Oh, fair halves!’ ‘All right! sit down, and you shall have them.’ Pantaloon declines, and Clown knocks him down, and they begin sharing fish. ‘There’s one for you and one for me, another for you and another for me, another for you and another for me.’ ‘How many have you got?’ asks Clown, and Pantaloon says, ‘One—two—three.’ Clown says, ‘No! you’ve got more than three.’ Then, taking one up, he asks, ‘How many is that?’—‘One.’ Taking another up, ‘How many’s that?’ Pantaloon exclaims, ‘Two!’ Clown says, ‘Then two and one is three,’ and takes up another, and asks how many that is. Pantaloon exclaims, ‘Three!’ Clown says, ‘Then three and three makes six.’ Clown then counts his own, and says, ‘I’ve only got three; you must give me these three to make me six. That’s fair halves. Ain’t you satisfied?’ ‘No!’ ‘Then take that,’ and he knocks him over with a fish.

“The next scene is a public-house—‘The Freemasons’ Arms, a select club held here.’ After trip by Harlequin and Columbine, enters Clown and Pantaloon. ‘Look’ee here! it’s a public-house! let’s have half a pint of half-and-half.’ Clown hollows, ‘Now ramrod!’ meaning landlord, and he comes on. ‘Why don’t you attend to gentlemen?’ ‘What’s your pleasure, sir?’ ‘Half a pint of half-and-half for me and my friend.’ He brings a tumbler, which Harlequin breaks, and it comes in half. ‘Hallo!’ cries Clown; ‘this is rum half-and-half! Here’s half for you and half for me.’

“Then they say, ‘I say, here’s somebody coming.’ Enter two Freemasons, who give each other the sign by shaking both hands, bumping up against each other, whispering in each other’s ear, and going into the public-house. Clown then calls the landlord, and says he belongs to the club. Landlord asks him for the sign. Clown says he’s got it over the door. He then takes Pantaloon and shakes his hands, and bumps him, and asks if that is the sign. The landlord says ‘No.’ ‘Is that it?’ ‘No, this is,’ and he gives Clown a spank; and he passes it to Pantaloon, and knocks him down. ‘That’s the sign; now we’ve got it between us.’ ‘Yes, and I’ve got the best half.’

“Clown says, ‘Never mind, we will get in;’ and he goes to the door and knocks, when the club descends and strikes them on the head. Clown then tells Pantaloon to go and knock, and he’ll watch and see where it comes from. The club comes down again, and knocks Pantaloon on the head; but Clown sees from whence it comes and pulls a man in fleshings out of the window. Clown and Pantaloon pursues him round stage, and he knocks them both over, and jumps through a trap in the window with a bottle on it, marked ‘Old Tom,’ and a scroll falls down, written ‘Gone to blazes.’ Pantaloon follows, and flap falls, on which is written, ‘To be left till called for.’ Clown is about to follow, when gun fires and scroll falls with ‘Dead letter’ on it. Pantaloon is bundled out by landlord and others; general row; policemen springing rattles, fireworks, &c.

“There are from four to five comic scenes like this. But it would take too long to describe them. Besides, we don’t do the same scenes every evening, but vary them each night.

“Then comes the catch, or the dark scene, in which Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, and Columbine are in the dark, and seize one another.

“You see the poetry is always beautifully adapted to ourselves. They’ve very clever fairies.

“We in generally finale with that there:

“Then the bell rings, and the man who keeps order cries out, ‘Pass out! pass out!’

“The performance generally takes from one hour and a half to an hour and three-quarters, and we do three of ’em a night. It makes the perspiration run off you, and every house I have a wet shirt. The only rest I have is with my boy singing ‘Hot codlins.’ When they call for the song I say, ‘Yes, yes; all right; you shall have them; only there’s a chip of mine will sing it for me,’ and I introduce my little boy—of four then—to sing.

“The general pay for Clowns at penny exhibitions is averaging from twenty to twenty-five shillings a-week. You can say without exaggeration, that there are twenty of these penny exhibitions in London. They always produce a new pantomime at Christmas; and all the year round, in summer as well as winter, they bring ’em out, when business is shy, for a draw, which they always find them answer.

“A Clown that can please at a penny gaff, is capable of giving satisfaction at any theatre, for the audience is a very difficult one to entertain. They have no delicacy in ’em, and will hiss in a moment if anything displeases them.

“A pantomime at a penny exhibition will run at Christmas three weeks or a month, if very successful; and during that time it’s played to upwards of twelve hundred persons a-night, according to the size of the house, for few penny ones hold more than four hundred, and that’s three times a-night. The Rotunda in the Blackfriars’-road, and the Olympic Circus in the Lower Marsh, Lambeth, do an immense business, for they hold near a thousand each, and that’s three thousand spectators the night.

“When the pantomime is on we only do a little comic singing before it begins playing.”

A tall, fine-looking young fellow, with a quantity of dark hair, which he wore tucked behind his ears, obliged me with his experience as a clown at the fairs. He came to me dressed in a fashionable “paletot,” of a gingerbread colour, which, without being questioned on the subject, he told me he had bought in Petticoat Lane for three shillings.

I have seldom seen a finer-built youth than this clown, for he was proportioned like a statue. The peculiarity of his face was that, at the junction of the forehead with the nose there was a rising, instead of a hollow, somewhat like that which is seen in Roman antiquities.

His face, whilst talking, was entirely without emotion, and he detailed the business outside the show, on the parade, in a sing-song voice, like a child saying its lesson; and although he often said “This makes ’em shout with laughter,” his own face remained as solemn as a parish clerk’s.

He furnished me with the following particulars of his life:—

“On and off, I’ve been clowning these twelve year. Previous to that time, I have done busking in public-houses, and comic singing, and ballet performing at penny exhibitions; as well as parading outside shows at fairs. I’ve done clowning at near every place, at fairs and in the streets, along with a school of acrobats, and at circuses, and at penny gaffs, and at the Standard, and such-like. I first commenced some twelve years ago, at Enfield fair. It was a travelling concern I was with,—the ‘Thespian Temple,’ or Johnson’s Theatre,—where I was engaged to parade on the outside as a walking gentleman. There was no clown for the pantomime, for he had disappointed us, and of course they couldn’t get on without one; so, to keep the concern going, old Johnson, who knew I was a good tumbler, came up to me, and said ‘he had nanti vampo, and your nabs must fake it;’ which means,—We have no clown, and you must do it. So I done the clowning on the parade, and then, when I went inside, I’d put on a pair of Turkish trousers, and a long cloak, and hat and feathers, to play ‘Robert, duke of Normandy,’ in the first piece.

“You see the performances consisted of all gag. I don’t suppose anybody knows what the words are in the piece. Everybody at a show theatre is expected to do general business, and when you’re short of people (as we was at Johnson’s, for we played ‘Robert, duke of Normandy,’ with three men and two girls), Clown is expected to come on and slip a cloak over his dress, and act tragedy in the first piece. We don’t make up so heavy for the clown for fairs, only a little dab of red on the cheeks, and powder on the face; so we’ve only just got to wipe off the ‘slop’ when it’s in the way. You looks rather pale, that’s all. The dress is hidden by the one we put over it.

“The plot of ‘Robert, duke of Normandy,’ is this: He and his slave Piccolo come in; and after a little business between them, all gagging, he says, ‘Slave! get back to the castle!’ he answers, ‘Your orders shall be attended to!’ Then he says, ‘At the peril of your life, and prevent the fair Angeline to escape!’ That’s the first scene. In the second, two of Robert’s slaves attack his rival, and then Robert rushes in and pretends to save him. He cries ‘Hold! two to one!’ The men go off, saying, ‘Well, we part as friends! when next we meet, we meet as foes!’ As soon as Robert leaves the rival the lady comes in, and tells him she is flying from Robert’s castle, and that Robert has seduced her, and seeks her life. She tells him that the man who just left him is he. ‘It is false!’ he says; ‘that is my friend!’ She cries, ‘Test him!’ ‘But how?’ he asks. She replies, ‘Follow me to the statue, at the bottom of the grove, and then I will tell you!’ Then the third comes on. Enter Robert and slave, and the marble statue discovered: that is, it is supposed to be, but it is only Angeline dressed up. He gives the slave instructions to put a ring on the finger of the statue—for he is supposed to have dealings with Old Nick, and that every time he put a ring on the statue he can demand a victim. He tells the slave to place a ring on the finger, and pronounce these words: ‘When it may please your most gracious majesty to seek your husband, to find a victim, you will find him here!’ ‘No, no, not here—there!’ pointing to Robert. The Duke half draws his sword, and exclaims, ‘Slave! what ho!’ without touching him. Enters the rival, who demands satisfaction of Robert; who says, ‘What can I do to satisfy you?’ for he’s in a deuce of a go now. He then tells him to kneel to the statue, and swear he is not Robert, duke of Normandy. Instead of that he calls to the servant, and tells him to put the ring on; but Robert, the Duke, is in a deuce of a way, tearing his hair. The servant does it, and exclaims, ‘I have done it; but would you believe it, when I placed it on the finger, the finger became collapsed!’ Robert cries, ‘Slave, thou art a liar! if I find that it is false I will cleave thee to the earth!’ Robert examines the finger, and exclaims, ‘Alas! it is too true!’ and he kneels to the statue and says, ‘I swear that I am’—and he’s going to say, ‘not duke of Normandy,’ but the statue is too quick for him, and adds, ‘Robert, duke of Normandy!’ And then the comic slave pops his head round, and pronounces, ‘Oh, the devil!’ Then the rival stabs him, and he falls down wounded, and then he’s triumphant; and a pen’orth of blue fire finishes the piece; and then ding! ding! dong! and down goes the curtain. We always have blue fire,—a pen’orth each house,—and that makes it go. Sometimes there are two friends in the piece; but it all depends upon whether the piece is powerfully cast or not. We usually knocks the two friends into one, or does away with ’em all together. ‘Robert, duke of Normandy,’ is a never-failing fair piece, and we always does it every year. That and ‘Blue Beard, or Female Curiosity,’ and ‘Fair Rosamond, or the Bower of Woodstock,’ are our stock pieces. After the curtain has been down three minutes it goes up again, and the heavy goes in and says,—

“Then all of us at the sides put their fingers in their mouths and howl like Indians. There’s generally a cue given of ‘Now, demons.’ After that the heavy man says:—

We called him russet-booted, because he had been playing the lover in the first piece. At Richardson’s they called him ‘Spangled Harlequin,’ but old Johnson couldn’t do that, he hadn’t no wardrobe. Then the heavy man continues:—

Then he goes on:—

Then I cried, ‘Hulloa! here we are!’ and the sports begin.

“The first trip, as we calls it—a dance, to use your terms—is Harlequin comes in with Columbine for a hornpipe. If he can’t dance, Clown, as soon as he begins, cries, ‘Here we are!’ and rushes in and drives them off.

“After that, Clown runs on and says, ‘Here we are!’ and knocks Pantaloon down; who exclaims, ‘Oh! ain’t I got the tooth-ache!’ Clown says, ‘Let me feel your tooth. Oh, it’s quite loose! I’ll get a bit of string and soon have it out.’ Clown goes off for string, Pantaloon singing out, ‘Murder! murder!’ Clown returns with string and a pistol, and then ties the string, and cries, ‘Here goes one, and now it’s two, and here goes three,’ and fires and pulls a wooden tooth, as big as your fist, with four sharp prongs to it. I’ve had these teeth often as big as a quartern loaf, but I’m talking of my first appearance. Pantaloon says, ‘Here, that’s my tooth!’ and Clown replies, ‘So it is,’ and hits him on the head with it. Then he asks Pantaloon if he’s better; but he answers, ‘No, I’m worse. Oh! oh! I’ve got a cold in my gum!’ Then a red-hot poker is introduced, and he burns him with it all round the stage. That concludes the first scene. Then there’s another trip, a would-be polka or so; and then comes the bundle-scene. Enter a Yorkshireman—it’s mostly Harlequins do this, because most of the others are outside parading, to keep the crowd together—he’s got a smockfrock on and russet boots at Johnson’s, and he says, ‘I’ve coome up here to Lunnon to see my Dolly. I feel rather dry, and I’ll just gi’ in here to get half-a-point of yale. I’ll just leave my bunnel outside, and keep a strict eye on it, for they say as how Lunnon has plenty of thieves in it.’ Enter Clown, very cautiously. He sees the bundle, and calls Pantaloon. He tells Pantaloon, ‘I must have it, because I want it.’ He goes and picks up the bundle, and says to Pantaloon, ‘I shouldn’t wonder but what this bundle belongs to——’ ‘Me,’ the Yorkshireman says, and the Clown says, ‘Ah, I thought so;’ and then he takes Pantaloon’s hand, and says, ‘Come along, little boy, we shall get into trouble,’ and leads him off. They come on again, and this time Clown tells Pantaloon to get it; so he goes and picks up the bundle, and Yorkshireman knocks him down. Clown runs off and Pantaloon after. Clown then returns on his belly, drawing himself on with his hands. He gets the bundle in his mouth, and is just going off when Yorkshireman turns round, and Clown seeing him, gives the bundle to Pantaloon, and says, ‘Hold this.’ Yorkshireman seizes Clown and tells him he wants his bundle. Pantaloon having run away with it, Clown says, ‘I haven’t got it, starch me’ (that means, ‘search me’); and there is a regular run over the stage crying ‘Hot beef! hot beef!’ (instead of ‘Stop thief!’) The Yorkshireman collars Pantaloon, and says, ‘I’ll take you to the station-house,’ and Clown exclaims, ‘Yes, and I’ll take this bundle down the lane’ (meaning Petticoat-lane, because there is a sale for anything there). Then comes the catch-scene as we call it; that is, they all come on in the dark, Clown singing, ‘Puss, puss! have you seen my pussy?’ Then in pops the fairy, and cries, ‘Hold! your magic sports is run, and thus I step between.’ Pantaloon adds, ‘Aye, it’s all so gay;’ and Clown cries, ‘Yes, and all serene;’ and the fairy says, ‘And with my magic wand I change the scene.’ Then everybody sings:—

“Then the curtain falls, and Clown puts his head out on one side and exclaims, ‘It’s all,’ and Pantaloon pops out at the other side and adds, ‘over.’

“The handing man, who has done Robert, then shouts out from the top, ‘Pass out!’ in a sepulchral voice, and a door opens in the side of the stage for the people to leave by. That day I was with old Johnson—we used to call him ‘Snuffy Johnson,’ ’cos he carried a lot of snuff in his waistcoat pocket—we were very busy, and there was a good many people waiting on the outside to come in, so we only did about two of them regular performances; and then about six o’clock in the evening the crowd got so great, old Johnson used to hollow through the parade-door, over people’s heads, ‘John Aderley,’ just as we had commenced playing, and that meant ‘Cut it short.’ We used to finish it up sharp then, and finish all up in six or seven minutes. We used to knock Robert the Devil into a very little space, doing the scenes, but cutting them short; and as for the pantomime, we had scarcely commenced with ‘Two more slaves will I rise from out the unfathomable deep,’ than we were singing, ‘Our pantomime’s done, here’s an end to our fun.’ Sometimes the people would grumble awful, and at others they laughed to see how they was swindled.

“I got on very fair on my first appearance as Clown, considering the circumstances, but I had, you see, four of the best parading comic men opposing me. There was Teddy W—— as Silly Billy, and Black Sambo as Black Fop, and Funny Felix as ring clown, and Steve Sanderson, another clown, at Frazier’s Circus, next door to us; and we didn’t stand much chance at clowning alongside of them, as they’re the best paraders out. Besides, Frazier’s booth took nearly all the ground up; and as we drawed up on the ground (that is, with the parade-carriages) late on Sunday evening, we were obliged to have a plot next to the Circus, and we had the town pump right in the audience part, close to the first seat in the gallery, and the Obelisk—or rather a cross it is—took up one side of the stage, which next day we used as the castle in Blue Beard, when the girl gets up on a ladder to the top of the railings, which had a shutter on ’em, and that was Fatima looking out from the spire of the castle for her Salem. Ah! ’twas a great hit, for we put an old scene round it, and it had a capital effect.

“What we do when we go out clowning to a travelling theatre is this. This is what I did at Enfield: we arrived late and drawed up the parade-carriages on the ground, which the gov. had gone on a-head to secure. Then we went to sleep for awhile—pitched on a shutter underneath the parade-carriages, for it had been wet weather, and we couldn’t sleep on the canvas for the booth, for it had been sopped with rain at Edmonton fair. As soon as it was break of day we begun getting up the booth, and being short-handed it took us till three o’clock before we was ready. First we had to measure our distances and fix the parade-waggons. Then we planted our king pole on the one in the centre; then we put our back-pole on the one near the parade; then we put on our ridge at top, and our side-rails; and then we put our side-ridges, and sling our rafters. We then roll the tilt up, which is for the roof, and it gets heavy with dirt, and we haul it up to the top and unroll it again and fasten it again; then we fix the sides up, with shutters about six feet square, which you see on the top of the travelling parade-carriages. We fixes up the theatre and the seats which we take with us. All the scenes roll up, and is done up in bundles. The performers drop under the parade-waggons, and there’s a sacking up to divide the men’s part from the women. There’s a looking-glass—sometimes an old bit or a two-penny one starred, or any old thing we can get hold of—and the gov. gives you out your dress. We always provide our own slips and such-like.

“When we parade outside, it all depends upon what kind of Pantaloon you’ve got with you, as to what business you can make. When we first come out on the parade all the company is together, and we march round, form a half-circle, or dress it, as we say, while the band plays ‘Rule Britannia,’ or some other operatic air. Then the manager generally calls out, ‘Now, Mr. Merryman, state the nature of the performances to be given here to-day.’ Then I come forward, and this is the dialogue: ‘Well, Mr. Martin, what am I to tell them?’ ‘The truth, sir! what they’ll see here to-day.’ ‘Well, if they stop long enough they’ll see a great many people, I shouldn’t wonder.’ ‘No, no, sir, I want you to tell them what they’ll see inside our theatre.’ ‘Well, sir, they’ll see a splendid drama by first-rate performers, of Robert Dooke of Normandy, with a variety of singing and dancing, with a gorgeous and comic pantomime, with new dresses and scenery, and everything combined to make this such an entertainment as was never before witnessed in this town, and all for the small charge of three shillings.’ ‘No, no, Mr. Merryman, threepence.’ ‘What! threepence? I shan’t perform at a threepenny show.’ And then I pretend to go down the steps as if leaving; he pulls me back, and says, ‘Come here, sir; what are you going to do?’ ‘I shan’t spoil my deputation playing for threepence.’ ‘But you must understand, Merryman, we intend giving them one and all a treat, that the working-classes may enjoy theirselves as well as noblemen.’ ‘Then if that’s the case I don’t mind, but only for this once.’

“Then I begin spouting again and again, always ending up with ‘to be witnessed for the low charge of threepence.’ Then Pantaloon comes up to say what he’s going to do, and I give him the ‘nap,’ and knock him on his back. He cries ‘I’m down,’ and I turn him over and pick him up, and say, ‘And now you’re up.’ Then the company form a half set and do a quadrille. When they have scrambled through that, Clown will do a comic dance, and then some burlesque statues. This is the way them statues are done: I go inside and get a birch-broom, and put a large piece of tilt or old cloth round me, and stand just inside the curtains at the entrance from the parade, ready to come out when wanted. Then the male portion of the company get just to the top of the steps, and Pantaloon says to one of them, ‘Did you speak?’ He says, ‘When?’ and Pantaloon says, ‘Now;’ and the whole lot make a noise, hollowing out, ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ as if they was astonished, but it’s only to attract attention. Then the gong strikes, and the trumpets flourishes, and everybody shouts, ‘Hi, hi! look here!’ Then, naturally, all the people turn towards the caravan to see what’s up. Then they clear a passage-way from the front to the entrance and back, and bring me forth with this bit of cloth before me. The music flourishes again, and they make a tremendous tumult, crying out, ‘Look here! look here!’ and when all are looking I drop the cloth, and then I stand in the position of Hercules, king of Clubs, with a birch-broom across my shoulders, and an old hat on a-top of my wig. Then the band strikes up the statue music, and I goes through the statues; such as Ajax defying the lightning, and Cain killing his brother Abel; and it finishes up with the fighting and dying Gladiator. As a finale I do a back-fall, and pretend to be dead. The company then picks me up and carry me, lying stiff, on their shoulders round the parade. They carry me inside, and shout out, ‘All in to begin; now we positively commence.’ Then they drive everybody in off the parade. When the public have taken their seats then we come strolling out, one at a time, till we all get out on the parade again, because the place isn’t sufficiently full. It’s what we call ‘making a sally.’ The checktakers at the door prevent anybody leaving if they want to come out again.

“Then I get up to some nonsense again. Perhaps I’ll get up a lot of boys out of the fair, and make ’em sit on the parade in a row, and keep a school, as I call it. I get an old property fiddle, and I tell them, when I play they must sing. Then I give out a hymn. The bow has a lot of notches in it, and there’s a bit of wood sticking up in the fiddle; so that when I plays it goes ‘ricketty, ricketty,’ like. This is the hymn I gives out:—

“Of course, when they sings, they make a horrible noise, or even if they dont, I begin to wallop them with my bow. I then tell them I must teach them something easier first. Then I give them—

Then I finish up by putting on the boys a lot of masks, and some have old soldiers’ coats; and I give them implements of war, such as old brooms or sticks, and then I put them through their military exercises. I stand in front, with the birch-broom as my gun, and I tell them they must do as I do. Then I cry, ‘File arms,’ and all mark their own muskets. I tell them to lay them all down; and after they have laid down their arms I tell them to shoulder arms, which makes a shout, because they haven’t got no arms. One boy, who is put up to it, says, ‘I’ve got no arms;’ I go up to him and catch hold of his arms, and ask him what he calls ‘these here.’ Then I make him put them on his shoulders, and tell him, that’s ‘shoulder arms.’ Then I tell them to ground arms, and I do it at the time, stooping down and putting my arms on the ground. I then call them to attention, and up comes the Pantaloon on a basket-horse, and I tell them they are going to be reviewed by the Duke. I give them all the implements again, and put them to stand attention. Pantaloon gallops round them, reviewing. He wears a large flap cocked-hat and soldier’s old coat. He makes a bit of fun with his horse, making it kick, and breaking the ranks of my soldiers. Then I quarrel with him about that, and he says, ‘He’s a right to do as he likes, because he’s my superior horse-ifer.’ Then he orders me to the other end of the parade, to stand attention, with my back towards the boys. Then he tells them to ride about face and charge, and they all run and charge me in behind. They run two or three times round the parade, still charging me, until I run inside to the theatre, and all the company shout out, ‘All in to begin; we are now positively to commence.’ We then get them in off the parade again, and if the place is full begin; if not, we gradually crawl out again one by one, and one of the girls dances a hornpipe or a Highland fling. We then make a sally, ‘All in again,’ and by that time we generally begin.

“This is the parade business that is most popular at fairs; we do a few other things, but they are all much of a muchness. It’s very hard work; and I have worked, since being with Snuffy Johnson, seventeen hours of a-day; but then we have not had so much to do on the outside. Sometimes I’ve been so tired at night, that I’ve actually laid down in my dress and never washed, but slept like that all night.

“The general pay for a clown, during fair-time, is 5s. or 6s. a-day, but that usually ends in your moving on the first day; then 4s. on the second, and, perhaps, 3s. on the third. The reason is, that the second and third day is never so good as the first. The excuse is, that business is not so good, and expenses are heavy; and if you don’t like it, you needn’t come again. They don’t stand about what you agree for; for instance, if it’s a wet day and you don’t open, there’s no pay. Richardson’s used, when the old man was alive, to be more money, but now it’s as bad as the rest of ’em. If you go on shares with a sharing company it averages about the same. We always share at the drum-head at night, when all’s over. It’s usually brought out between the stage and the bottom seat of the gallery. The master or missus counts out the money. The money on the drum-head may, if it’s a good fair, come to 16l. or 18l., or, as it most usually is, 9l. or 10l. I have known us to share 1l. a-piece afore now; and I’ve known what it is to take 10d. for a share. We usually take two fairs a-week, or we may stay a night or two after the fair’s over, and have a bespeak night. The wages of a clown comes to—if you average it—1l. a-week all the year round, and that’s puffing it at a good salary, and supposing you to be continually travelling. Very likely, at night we have to pull down the booth after performing all day, and be off that night to another fair—15 or 16 miles off it may be—and have to build up again by the next afternoon. The women always ride on the top of the parade carriages, and the men occasionally riding and shoving up behind the carriages up hill. The only comfort in travelling is a short pipe, and many a time I’ve drowned my woes and troubles in one.

“The scene of sharing at the drum-head is usually this,—while the last performance is going on the missus counts up the money; and she is supposed to bring in all the money she has taken, but that we don’t know, and we are generally fiddled most tremendous. When the theatre’s empty, she, or him, generally says, ‘Now lads, please, now ladies! it’s getting late;’ and when they have all mustered it’s generally the cry, ‘We’ve had a bad fair!’ The people seldom speak. She then takes the number of the company,—we generally averages some sixteen performers,—and after doing so she commences sharing, taking up two or three shares, according to the ground-rent; one then to herself for taking money; then for the husband being there, (for they don’t often perform); then they takes shares for the children, for they makes them go on for the fairies, and on our parade. Snuffy Johnson used to take two shares for the wardrobes and fittings, and that is the most reasonable of any of ’em, for they mostly take double that; indeed, we always took six. Then there are two shares for ground-rent, and two for travelling expenses. The latter two shares depend entirely upon the fair; for the expenses are just the same whether we takes money or not, so that if it’s a bad fair, more has to be deducted, and that’s the worse for us, on both sides. That makes twelve or thirteen shares to be deducted before the men touch a penny for themselves. Any strolling professional who reads that will say, ‘Well, ’tis very considerate; for it’s under the mark, and not over.’

“When we have finished at one fair, if we want to go to another the next day, as soon as the people have gone in for the last performance we commence taking down the pay-box, and all the show-fittings on the outside, and all that isn’t wanted for the performance. As soon as the mummers have done their first slang, if they are not wanted in the pantomime they change themselves and go to work pulling down. When the pantomime’s over, every one helps till all’s packed up; then sharing takes place, and we tramp on by night to the next fair. We then camp as well as we can till daylight, if it isn’t morning already, and to work we go building for the fair; and in general, by the time we’ve done building, it’s time to open.

“I’ve travelled with ‘Star’s Theatre Royal,’ and ‘Smith and Webster’s,’ (alias Richardson’s), and ‘Frederick’s Theatre,’ and ‘Baker’s Pavilion,’ and ‘Douglass’s travelling Shakspearian Saloon;’ (he’s got scenes from Shakspear’s plays all round the front, and it’s the most splendid concern on the road), and I’ve done the comic business at all of them. They are all conducted on the same principle, and do the same kind of business, as that I’ve described to you.

“When we’re travelling it depends upon the business as to what we eat. They talk of strolling actors living so jollily and well, but I never knew it fall to my share. What we call a mummer’s feed is potatoes and herrings, and they always look out for going into a town where there’s plenty of fresh herrings. A fellow we called Nancy Dawson was the best hand at herrings. I’ve known him go into a tavern and ask for the bill of fare, and shout out, ‘Well, Landlord, what have you got for dinner?’ Perhaps he’d say, ‘There’s beef and veal, sir, very nice—just ready;’ and then he’d say, ‘No, I’m sick of meat; just get me a nice bloater!’ and if it came to much more than a penny there was a row. If we are doing bad business, and we pass a field of swedes, there’s a general rush for the pull. The best judges of turnips is strolling professionals. I recollect, in Hampshire, once getting into a swede field, and they was all blighted: we pulled up a hundred, I should think, but when we cut them open they was all flaxy inside, and we, after all, had to eat the rind. We couldn’t get a feed. Sausages and fagots (that’s made of all the stale sausages and savaloys, and unsightly bits of meat what won’t sell) is what we gets hold of principally. The women have to make shifts as we do. We always get plenty of beer, even when we can’t get money; for we can sing a song or so, and then the yokels stand something: besides, there’s hardly a town we go into without some of the yokels being stage-struck, and they feel quite delighted to be among the professionals, and will give us plenty of beer if we’ll talk to them about acting.

“It’s impossible to say how many clowns there are working at canvas theatres. There’s so many meddling at it,—not good uns, but trying to be. I can mention fifty, I am sure, by name. I shouldn’t think you would exaggerate, if you was to say there was from one hundred and fifty to two hundred who call themselves clowns. Many of the first-rate clowns now in London have begun at strolling. There’s Herring, and Lewis, and Nelson, and plenty more, doing well now.

“It’s a hard life, and many’s the time we squeedge a laugh out, when it’s like killing us to do it. I’ve never known a man break down at a fair, done up, for, you see, the beer keeps us up; but I’ve known one chap to faint on the parade from exhaustion, and then get up, as queer as could be, and draw twopence and go and have a fish and bread. A woman at an oyster-stall alongside of the theatre give him a drop of beer. He was hearty and hungry, and had only joined lately,—regular hard up; so he went two days without food. When we shared at night he went and bought a ham-bone, and actually eat himself asleep, for he dropped off with the bone in his hand.”

A man who had passed many years of his life as jester at the cheap circuses, or penny equestrian shows frequenting the fairs in the neighbourhood of London, obliged me with the following details:—

“There are only two kinds of clowns, the stage and the circus clown, only there is different denominations: for instance, the clown at the fair and the clown at the regular theatre, as well as the penny gaff (when they give pantomimes there), are one and the same kind of clown, only better or worse, according to the pay and kind of performance; but it’s the same sort of business. Now the circus clown is of the same kind as those that go about with schools of acrobats and negro serenaders. He is expected to be witty and say clever things, and invent anything he can for the evening’s performance; but the theatre clown is expected to do nothing but what enters into the business of the piece. Them two are the main distinctions we make in the perfession.

“I’ve travelled along with only two circuses; but then it’s the time you stop with them, for I was eighteen months along with a man of the name of Johnson, who performed at the Albion, Whitechapel, and in Museum-street, opposite Drury-lane (he had a penny exhibition then), and for above two years and a half along with Veale, who had a circus at the Birdcage, Hackney-road, and at Walworth.

“At Museum-street we only had one ‘prad,’ which is slang for pony, although we used to introduce all the circus business. We had jugglers, and globe-runners, and tight-rope dancers also. We never had no ring built, but only sawdust on the stage, and all the wings taken out. They used to begin with a chant and a hop (singing and dancing), after which there was tight-rope hopping. As soon as ever the rope was drawn up, Johnson, who had a whip in his hand, the same as if it was a regular circus, used to say, ‘Now, Mr. Merryman.’ Then I’d run on and answer, ‘Here I am, sir, all of a lump, as the old man said what found the sixpence. I’m up and dressed, like a watchbox. What shall I have the pleasure for to come for to go, for to go for to fetch, for to fetch for to carry, to oblige you?’ I usually wore a ring dress, with red rings round my trunks, and a fly to correspond. The tights had straight red lines. My wig was a white one with a red comb. Then Johnson would say, ‘Have the pleasure to announce Madame Leone.’ Then I give it: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is Madame Leone, a young lady that threw her clothes into bed and hung herself upon the door-nail.’ Then she just gets up on the rope, and I go and sit down as if I was going to sleep. Mr. Johnson then says, ‘Come, sir, you’re going to sleep; you’ve got your eyes shut.’ I answer, ‘I beg your pardon, sir, I was not asleep.’ And then he says I was, and I contradict him, and add, ‘If I had my eyes shut, I am the first of the family that went to sleep so.’ Then he asks how that is? and I reply, ‘Because they were afraid of having their pockets picked;’ and he says, ‘Nonsense! all your family was very poor, there was nothing in their pockets to pick;’ and I add, ‘Yes, but there was the stitches though.’ All these puns and catches goes immense. ‘Now, sir,’ he continues, ‘chalk the rope.’ I say, ‘Whose place is it?’ and he replies, ‘The fool’s.’ ‘Then do it yourself,’ I answer. And then we go on in this style. He cries, ‘What did you say, sir?’ ‘I said I’d do it myself.’ ‘Now, Madame Leone, are you ready?’ and she nods; and then I tell the music to toodelloo and blow us up. She then does a step or two—a little of the polka—and retires, and I am told to chalk the rope again, and this is our talk: ‘Oh dear, oh dear! there’s no rest for the wicked. Sir, would you be so kind, so obliging, as to inform me why I chalk the top of the rope?’ ‘To prevent the young lady from slipping down, sir.’ ‘Oh, indeed! then I’ll chalk underneath the rope.’ He then asks, ‘What are you doing of, sir?’ ‘Why didn’t you tell me when I chalked the top it’s to prevent the young lady from slipping down?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Then I chalked underneath, to prevent her from slipping up again. Would you oblige me with your hand?’ Then I look at it and say, ‘Plenty of corns in it; you’ve done some hard work in your time.’ ‘I have, sir.’ ‘Beautiful nails, too;’ and then I rub the chalk on his hand, and when he asks what I’m doing of, I say ‘Chalking it.’ ‘What for, sir?’ ‘Why, sir, to keep it from slipping into other people’s pockets.’ Then he gives me a click of whip and says, ‘Out of the way, sir! Now, Madame Leone, proceed.’

“When she’s finished the dance I cry, ‘Now I’ll get on the rope and have a try,’ and I mount very courageously, crying,

“Then I find the rope move, and pretend to be frightened, and cry, ‘O Lord, don’t! it shakes.’ Then I ask, ‘Mr. Johnson, will you chalk my pulse and hand me up the barber’s-pole?’ and when I’ve got it I say, ‘Here’s a nice ornament on a twelfth-cake.’ I also ask him, ‘I say, sir, did you ever know some of my friends was first-rate rope-dancers?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Oh yes, sir, they danced to some of the large houses.’ ‘What house was that, sir? was it Victoria?’ ‘I know nothing about Victoria, sir; you must ask Albert.’ ‘Perhaps, sir, it was the Garrick.’ ‘Oh, catch my brother dancing in a garret.’ ‘Perhaps, sir, it was Covent Garden.’ ‘No, sir, he never danced in no garden, nor a lane neither.’ ‘Perhaps, sir, it was the Haymarket.’ ‘No, sir; nor the Corn-market.’ ‘I see, sir, you can’t remember the house.’ ‘No, sir; I’ll tell you, sir, it’s a high stone building between Holborn and Newgate-market.’ ‘Oh, you mean Newgate.’ ‘Yes, sir; don’t you remember we were both in there for pot stealing?’ ‘Come down here, sir, and I’ll give you a flogging.’ ‘You mean to say, sir, you’ll give me a flogging if I come down?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Then, sir, I shall remain where I am.’ I then tell the music to toodelloo and blow us up, and I attempt to dance, and he lets the rope down, which throws me on to my back. He asks, ‘Are you hurt?’ and I reply, ‘No, I’m killed.’ ‘Get up, sir.’ ‘I’ll not move, sir.’ ‘I’ll give you the whip, sir.’ ‘That’s no use, sir; I’ve made a bargain with it, that if I don’t touch it it won’t touch me. Oh, ain’t I bad! I’ve got the cobbler’s marbles, or else the hen-flew-out-of-the-window.’ ‘Here’s a policeman coming!’ and then I jumps up in a minute, and ask, ‘Where?’

“Then I go to his whip, and touch it. ‘What’s this, Mr. Johnson?’ ‘My whip, sir.’ ‘I’ll tell you what it is, Mr. Johnson, I’ll bet you a bottle of blacking and a three-out brush, that you can’t say ‘my whip’ to three questions that I shall put to you.’ ‘I’ll take you, sir.’ I then take the whip from him, and say, ‘Providing, sir, you was to meet a poor blind old man, and you was to give him a ha’penny, and you was to meet me and make me a present of a 5l. note, what would you deserve?’ He says, ‘My whip, sir.’ ‘Yes, sir; that’s one to you. I say, sir, you’ve got a daughter, and if she was to marry and get a great deal of money, what would you deserve?’ ‘My whip, sir.’ ‘Certainly, sir; that’s two to you. Now, sir, providing you was a top of that rope, and I was to undo the rope and let you down, and I was to give you the cobbler’s marbles with the hen-flew-out-of-the-window, and tell you that a policeman was a-coming, what should I deserve?’ Then he don’t like to say, ‘My whip,’ and stammers out; at last he says it, and then I beat him round the stage till he runs off. Then I lay it down and cry cock-a-doodle-do, crowing for victory, and he creeps in and gets the whip again, and then lashes me.

CIRCUS CLOWN AT FAIR.

“After juggling and globes, we always did ‘a laughable sketch entitled Billy Button’s ride to Brentford,’ and I used to be Jeremiah Stitchem, a servant of Billy Button’s, that comes for a ‘sitiation.’ It opens this way. Jeremiah makes applications for this situation. He asks, ‘What can you do?’ ‘Everythink and nothink.’ ‘Can you clean plates?’ ‘I can break ’em.’ ‘Can you run errands?’ ‘All ways.’ He is engaged at 4s. a-week and his board; and then comes some comic business about a letter coming by post. Billy tells him to bring him a light to read this letter, and he sets fire to it. This letter is from Brentford, saying that his sister’s ill and that he’s wanted directly. He goes to a livery stable and asks for a lady’s pony, at the same time saying he wants it quiet. The man says he’s got three: one that is blind, and threw the last gentleman that rode it into a ditch, and Billy won’t have that. The other is lame of one leg, and he don’t like that, for he wants a lady’s pony that is very quiet. Then this stable-keeper recommends this pony, saying it’s very quiet, but it’s a kicker. Then first he gets up the wrong way, and the head comes round to the tail of the horse; Jerry then tells him he’s wrong, and then offers to give him a ‘bung up,’ and chucks him right over the pony’s back on to the ground on the other side. He then gets on properly, ready for starting, and tells Jerry he may expect him home in a day or two. He tries to start the pony, but it won’t go. Jerry takes a needle and pretends to stick it into the pony’s flank, which causes it to kick and rear until he throws Billy Button off; and then the pony chases Jerry round the stage with his mouth open to bite him. Then there’s a regular confusion, and that winds it up.

“If that pony catched you he’d give it you, too. He caught hold of me one night by my trousers, and nearly shook my life out of me. It hurt me, but everybody roared and thought it all right. After that I hit upon a dodge. I used to have a roll of calico tacked on to my back, and the pony would catch hold of it and pull out about four yards of what looked like a shirt. Those ponies are very playful, and may be taught anything.

“The stage-clown’s dress is what we term full dresses, with a wig and a tail, but the circus clown’s is merely the top-knot, and the ring dress, as if they are spangled they are always on the twist, something in the style of the serpent. They don’t do the red half-moon on the cheek, like stage clowns, but they have just a dab, running up to the cheek-bone. A stage-clown’s dress costs from 5l. to 10l.; but a circus clown can make a suit complete, with pumps and all, for from 30s. to 35s. There’s such a thing as fourteen or fifteen yards of canvas in a stage-clown’s full dress; and that’s without exaggerating.

“Veal’s was the best circus I was at; there they had six prads (horses) and two ponies, and the performers were the best then of the day; for they had Monsieur Ludowic, a Frenchman, and the best bare-back juggler about. Mr. Moffat’s troupe, and Mr. Emery’s, was there also. Mr. Douglas was clown along with me, and little Ned and Sam was the tumblers. We had a large tent and regular circus, and could accommodate 1500 or 1600 people. I had 35s. a-week all the time I was there, (near 2½ years), and it wasn’t much, considering the work, for I had to produce all the pantomimes and act as ballet-master as well.

“It is, and it ain’t, difficult to ride round a circus standing up. I’ve known one man, who had never rode before in all his life, and yet went on one night, when they were short of hands, and done the Olympians to the best of his abilities, without falling off, though he felt very nervous. For these scenes they go slowly. You have to keep your eye fixed on the horse’s head. I’ve been in a circus so long, and yet I can’t ride. Even following the horse round the ring makes me feel so giddy at times, that I have had to catch hold of the tent-pole in the middle just to steady myself.

“I wasn’t the regular principal clown at Veal’s—only on occasions; I was the speaking clown and jester. I used to do such things as those:—For instance, there is a act—which is rode—called ‘The Shipwrecked Sailors,’ where he rides round the ring, introducing the shipwreck hornpipe, and doing a pantomime of giving a imitation of the sinking of the ship, and his swimming and returning safe on shore. Between the parts I used to say to the ring-master, ‘Are you aware, sir, that I’ve been to sea?’ He’d say, ‘No, sir.’ Then we’d go on: ‘Yes, sir; I once took a voyage to the Ickney Nockney Islands, off Bulbusen, just by the Thames Tunnel, in the mud.’ ‘Indeed, sir!’ ‘Yes, sir; and I’ve seen some wonderful sights, sir, in my time.’ ‘Indeed, sir!’ ‘Yes, sir: on this occasion it come so cold, that as the captain was on the quarter-deck, as he gave the word of command to the men, the words dropped out of his mouth lumps of ice on the deck. The ship would have been lost, had I not had the presence of mind to pick the words up, put them into a fryingpan, and warm them over the galley-fire: and as they thawed, so I gave the word of command to the men.’ ‘Dear me, sir! that was a wonderful sight!’ ‘It was indeed, sir!’ ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’ ‘Ah, sir, if you’d have been there, you’d have seen it yourself.’ ‘I don’t believe a word of it, Mr. Merryman.’ ‘Oh! come, sir, you must believe some.’ ‘Well, I believe a part it.’ ‘Then I believe the other part, sir, and so that makes the lot.’ ‘That’s right, sir.’ ‘Well, sir, I went for another voyage; and going through the Needles our vessel sprung a leak; not an onion, a leak; and she got a hole in her side.’ ‘She, sir?’ ‘Yes, sir, the ship; so the pumps was put to work; but as fast as they pumped the water out it came in at the hole, and the ship was sinking, when the captain came on deck and asked if there was any man courageous enough to stop the hole. Of course, sir, I was there.’ ‘But you’re not courageous.’ ‘Ain’t I, sir? try me.’ ‘Now,’ says he, ‘if there’s any man will stop this hole, to him will I give the hand of my daughter and 150l.’ So away I went down in the hold, and there was more than about 15 foot of water, and I pops my head in the hole until they got the vessel ashore. So you see, sir, I had the hand of his daughter and the 150l. ‘That was a good job for you, Mr. Merryman.’ ‘No, sir; it was a bad job.’ ‘How was that, sir?’ ‘Because when I was married I found that she was a cream of tartar.’ ‘Then, sir, you had the money; that was a good job for you.’ ‘No, sir; that was a bad job, sir.’ ‘How so?’ ‘I bought some sheep and oxen, and they died of the rot.’ ‘Ah! that was a bad job, Mr. Merryman.’ ‘No, sir; it was a good job; for shoes were very dear, and I sold the hides for more than I gave for the cattle.’ ‘Well, that was a good job.’ ‘No, sir, that was a bad job: for I built houses with the money and they got burned down.’ ‘Indeed, sir! that was a very bad job for you.’ ‘Oh no, sir; it was a very good job, because my wife got burnt in them, and, you see, I got rid of a tormenting wife.’

“There’s another famous gag ring-jesters always do, and I was very successful with it. After the act of horsemanship is over, when the ring-master is about leaving the ring, I say, ‘Allow me to go first, sir;’ and he replies, ‘No, sir, I never follow a fool.’ Then we go on:—‘I always do,’ meaning him. ‘What did you say, sir?’ ‘That’s quite true, sir.’ ‘I say, sir, did ever you see my sweetheart?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘There she is, sir; that nice young girl sitting there.’ ‘I don’t see her.’—‘Yes, there, sir, a-winking at me now. Ah! you little ducksey, ducksey, ducksey!’ ‘I don’t see her, sir.’ Then I gets him to the middle of the ring, and whilst he is pretending to stare in the direction I pointed to, I bolt off, saying, ‘I never follows a fool.’

“At fairs we do pretty well, and a circus always pays better than an acting-booth. We are always on salaries, and never go upon shares. The actors often say we look down upon them, and think them beneath our notice; and I dare say it’s true, to a great extent. I’ve heard our chaps cry out, ‘Won’t you be glad when herrings are cheap?’ or, ‘How were you off for bits of candle and lumps of coke last night at sharing?’ Then, no doubt, we live better at circuses, for we do our steaks and onions, and all that sort of thing; and, perhaps, that makes us cheeky.

“Some jesters at circuses get tremendous engagements. Mr. Barry, they say, had 10l. a-week at Astley’s; and Stonalfe, with his dogs, is, I should think, equal to him. There’s another, Nelson, too, who plays on the harmonicon, and does tunes on bits of wood—the same as went on the water in a tub drawn by geese, when the bridge broke down at Yarmouth—he’s had as much as 15l. a-week on a regular travelling engagement.

“There ain’t so many jesters as tumbling clowns. I think it’s because they find it almost too much for them; for a jester has to be ready with his tongue if anything goes wrong in the ring. I shouldn’t think there was more than from thirty to forty jesters in England. I reckon in this way. There are from ten to fifteen circuses, and that’s allowing them two jesters each. In the threepenny circus, such as Clarke’s or Frazier’s, the salary for a jester is about 2l. a-week, take the year round.”

The character of “Silly Billy” is a kind of clown, or rather a clown’s butt; but not after the style of Pantaloon, for the part is comparatively juvenile. Silly Billy is supposed to be a schoolboy, although not dressed in a charity-boy’s attire. He is very popular with the audience at the fairs; indeed, they cannot do without him. “The people like to see Silly Billy,” I was told, “much more than they do Pantaloon, for he gets knocked about more though, but he gives it back again. A good Silly,” said my informant, “has to imitate all the ways of a little boy. When I have been going to a fair, I have many a time stopped for hours watching boys at play, learning their various games, and getting their sayings. For instance, some will go about the streets singing:

which is some song about a boy pulling a tap from a water-butt, and letting the water run. There’s another:

I got these both from watching children whilst playing. Again, boys will swear ‘By the liver and lights of a cobbler’s lapstone!’ and their most regular desperate oath is,

They’ll say, too ‘S’elp my greens!’ and ‘Upon my word and say so!’ All these sayings I used to work up into my Silly Billy, and they had their success.

“I do such things as these, too, which is regularly boyish, such as ‘Give me a bit of your bread and butter, and I’ll give you a bit of my bread and treacle.’ Again, I was watching a lot of boys playing at pitch-button, and one says, ‘Ah, you’re up to the rigs of this hole; come to my hole—you can’t play there!’ I’ve noticed them, too, playing at ring-taw, and one of their exclamations is ‘Knuckle down fair, and no funking.’ All these sayings are very useful to make the character of Silly Billy perfect. Bless you, sir, I was two years studying boys before I came out as Silly Billy. But then I persevere when I take a thing in hand; and I stick so close to nature, that I can’t go far wrong in that line. Now this is a regular boy’s answer: when somebody says ‘Does your mother know you’re out?’ he replies, ‘Yes, she do; but I didn’t know the organ-man had lost his monkey!’ That always went immense.

“It’s impossible to say when Silly Billy first come out at fairs, or who first supported the character. It’s been popular ever since a fair can be remembered. The best I ever saw was Teddy Walters. He’s been at all the fairs round the universe—England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and France. He belonged to a circus when he went abroad. He’s done Silly Billy these forty year, and he’s a great comic singer beside. I was reckoned very clever at it. I used to look it by making up so young for it. It tires you very much, for there’s so much exertion attached to it by the dancing and capering about. I’ve done it at the fairs, and also with tumblers in the street; only, when you do it in the street, you don’t do one-half the business.

“The make-up for a Silly Billy is this: Short white trousers and shoes, with a strap round the ankle, long white pinafore with a frill round the neck, and red sleeves, and a boy’s cap. We dress the head with the hair behind the ears, and a dab of red on the nose and two patches of black over the eyebrows. When I went to the fair I always took three pairs of white trousers with me. The girls used to get up playing larks with me, and smearing my white trousers with gingerbread. It’s a very favourite character with the women—they stick pins into you, as if you were a pin-cushion. I’ve had my thighs bleeding sometimes. One time, during Greenwich, a ugly old woman came on the parade and kissed me, and made me a present of a silver sixpence, which, I needn’t say, was soon spent in porter. Why, I’ve brought home with me sometimes toys enough to last a child a fortnight, if it was to break one every day, such as carts and horses, cock and breeches, whistles, &c. You see, Silly Billy is supposed to be a thievish sort of a character, and I used to take the toys away from the girls as they were going into the theatre, and then I’d show it to the Clown and say, ‘Oh, look what that nice lady’s give me! I shall take it home to my mother.’

“I’ve done Silly Billy for Richardson’s, and near every booth of consequence. The general wages is from 5s. to 7s. 6d. the day, but my terms was always the three half-crowns. When there’s any fairs on, I can always get a job. I always made it a rule never to go far away from London, only to Greenwich or Gravesend, but not farther, for I can make it better in town working the concert-rooms. There are some who do nothing but Silly Billy; and then, if you take the year round, it comes to three days’ work a-week. The regular salary doesn’t come to more than a pound a-week, but then you make something out of those who come up on the parade, for one will chuck you 6d., some 1s. and 2s. 6d. We call those parties ‘prosses.’ I have had such a thing as 5s. give to me. We are supposed to share this among the company, and we generally do. These are the ‘nobbings,’ and may send up your earnings to as much as 25s. a-week, besides drink, which you can have more given to you than you want.

“When we go about the streets with tumblers, we mostly only sing a song, and dance, and keep the ring whilst the performance is going on. We also ‘nob,’ or gather the money. I never heard of a Silly Billy going out busking in tap-rooms and that. The tumblers like the Silly Billy, because the dress is attractive; but they are getting out of date now, since the grotesque clown is so much in the street. I went about with a school termed ‘The Demons,’ and very clever they was, though they’ve all broke up now, and I don’t know what’s become of them. There were four of them. We did middling, but we could always manage to knock up such a thing as 20s. each a-week. I was, on and off, about six months with them. After their tumbling, then my turn would begin. The drummer would say: ‘Turn and turn about’s fair play. Billy, now it’s your turn. A song from Billy; and if we meet with any encouragement, ladies and gentlemen, the young man here will tie his legs together and chuck several summersets.’ Then I’d sing such a song as ‘Clementina Clements,’ which begins like this:

“There’s one verse where she won’t walk over a potato-field because they’ve got eyes, and another when she faints at seeing a Dutch doll without clothes on. Then she doesn’t like tables’ legs, and all such as that, and that’s why she is ‘such a delicate duck.’ That song always tells with the women. Then I used to sing another, called ‘What do men and women marry for?’ which was a very great favourite. One verse that went very well was:

“When I danced, it was merely a comic dance—what we call a ‘roley poley.’ Sometimes, when we had been walking far, and pitching a good many times, the stones would hurt my feet awful with dancing.

“Pitching with tumblers is nothing compared to fair-parading. There you are the principal of the comic men after Clown, for he’s first. We have regular scenes, which take twenty minutes working through. When the parade is slack, then comes the Silly Billy business. There’s a very celebrated sketch, or whatever you call it, which Clown and Silly Billy do together, taking off mesmerism.

“Clown comes on, dressed up in a tall white hat, and with a cloak on. He says that he has just arrived from the island of Mititti, and that he’s the great Doctor Bokanki, the most celebrated mesmeriser in the world. He says, ‘Look at me. Here I am. Ain’t I mesmerised elephants? Ain’t I mesmerised monkeys? and ain’t I going to mesmerise him?’ He then tells Silly Billy to sit in the chair. Then he commences passing his hands across his eyes. He asks Billy, ‘What do you see, Billy?’ He turns his face, with his shut eyes, towards the crowd, and says, ‘A man with a big nose, sir, and such a many pimples on his face.’ ‘And now what do you see, Billy?’ ‘Oh, ain’t that gal a-winking at me! You be quiet, or I’ll tell my mother.’ ‘Now what do you see, Billy?’ ‘Nothink.’ Then the doctor turns to the crowd, and says, ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, I shall touch him on the fakement at the back of his head which is called a bump. Oh, my eyes! ain’t Billy’s head a-swelling! This bump, ladies and gentlemen, is called a organ—not a church nor yet a chapel organ, nor yet one of them they grind in the street. And here’s another organ,’ he says, putting his hand on Billy’s stomach. ‘This here is called his wittling department organ, or where he puts his grub. I shall now touch him on another fakement, and make him sing.’ Then he puts his finger on Billy’s head, and Billy sings:

“Then Billy becomes quiet again, and the doctor says, ‘I’ll now, ladies and gentlemen, touch him on another fakement, and cause Billy to cry. This here is his organ of the handling department.’ Then he takes Billy’s finger and bites it, and Billy begins to roar like a town bull. Then the doctor says, ‘I’ll now, ladies and gentlemen, touch him on another fakement, whereby the youth can tell me what I’ve got in my hand.’ He then puts his hand in his coat-tail pocket, and says, ‘Billy, what have I got in my hand?’ and Billy says, ‘Ah, you nasty beast! why it’s a—it’s a—it’s a—oh, I don’t like to say!’ They do this a lot of times, Billy always replying, ‘Oh, I don’t like to say!’ until at last he promises that, if he won’t tell his mother, he will; and then he says, ‘It’s a small-tooth comb.’ ‘Very right, Billy; and what’s in it?’ ‘Why, one of them ’ere things that crawls.’ ‘Very right, Billy; and what is it?’ ‘Why, it’s a—it’s a black-beetle.’ ‘Very right, Billy; look again. Do you see anything else?’ ‘There’s some crumbs.’ Then he tells Billy, that as he is such a good boy he’ll bring him to; and Billy says, ‘Oh, don’t, please, sir; one’s quite enough.’ Then he brings him to, and Billy says, ‘Oh, ain’t it nice! Oh, it’s so golly! Here, you young woman, I wish you’d let me touch your bumps.’ Then, if the people laugh, he adds, ‘You may laugh, but it gives you a all-over sort of a feeling, as if you had drunk three pints of pickling vinegar.’

“That’s a very favourite scene; but I haven’t give it you all, for it would fill a volume. It always makes a hit; and Billy has a rare chance of working comic attitudes and so on when the doctor touches his bumps.

“There’s another very celebrated scene for Silly Billy. It’s what we call the preaching scene. Silly Billy mounts up a ladder, and Clown holds it at the bottom, and looks through the steps. Clown has to do the clerk to Billy’s parson. Billy begins by telling the clerk that he must say ‘Barley sugar’ at the end of every sentence he preaches. Billy begins in this way:—‘Keyind brethren, and you fair damsels,’ and he’s supposed to be addressing the chaps and gals on the parade, ‘I hope that the text I shall give you will be a moral to you, and prevent you from eating the forbidden sweets of—’ ‘Barley sugar!’ ‘No, you fool—sin! and that will put you in the right path as you walk through the fields of—’ ‘Barley sugar!’ ‘No; virtue, you fool! My text is taken from the epistle of Thomas to the Ethiopians, the first chapter, and two first slices off a leg of mutton, where it says so beautifully—’ ‘Barley sugar!’ ‘No, no; that’s not it! Now it come to go along in the first year in the first month, two days before that, as we was journeying through the land of—’ ‘Barley sugar!’ ‘No, no, you fool! keep quiet. Flowerpotamia, we met a serpent, and from his mouth was issuing—’ ‘Barley sugar!’ ‘No, no! fire.’ Then all the people on the parade jump up and shout, ‘Where?’ Then Billy says, ‘Oh, my sister’s tom-cat, here’s a congregation! Sit down.’ When they are all quiet again, Billy goes on: ‘Now this I say unto you—’ ‘Barley sugar!’ ‘Keep quiet, will you!’ and he hits Clown with his foot. ‘Two shall be well and two shall be queer. Oh, ain’t I ill! Go, men of little understanding, and inherit a basin of pea-soup at the cook-shop, together with—’ ‘Barley sugar!’ ‘No such thing!—my blessing. Unto you will I give nothing, and unto you just half as much—’ ‘Barley sugar!’ ‘Hold your tongue! You that have had nothing shall give it back again, and you that had nothing at all, you shall keep it. Now let us sing—’ ‘Barley sugar!’ ‘No; a song.’ Then Billy tells them to get their books, and they take up pint pots, or whatever they can get. ‘Let us sing,’ and they all jump up, and they all begin:

‘Barley sugar!’—‘Hold your tongue!—beer.’ After all of them have sung, Billy says, ‘Now let us say,’ and all of them howl, ‘Aye, aye.’

‘Barley sugar!’ ‘Yes, barley sugar,’ says Billy. Then all the congregation cries—‘O—o—o—o;’ and Clown says, ‘Bar—bar—bar—barley sugar,’ and he is so much affected he weeps and goes to wipe his eyes, and lets the ladder fall, and down comes Billy. He gives sundry kicks, and then pretends to be dying. The congregation say, ‘Peace be with you, Billy,’ and he answers, ‘Yes, peas-pudding and fried taters;’ and the Clown howls out, ‘Barley sugar!’ When Billy is dead, if business isn’t very good, they put the body on the ladder, and form a procession. The music goes at the head and plays a hornpipe, slowly, and then they leave the booth, and parade through the fair among the people, with Clown as chief mourner. The people are bursting their sides, and wherever we go they follow after. All the mourners keep crying, ‘Oh, oh, oh, Billy’s dead!’ and then Billy turns round, and sometimes says, ‘Don’t be fools! it’s only a lark:’ or else, ‘Don’t tell mother; she’ll give me a hiding.’ This procession business always brings a flock behind us, and fills the theatre, or goes a great way towards it. When I have been Silly Billy, and representing this scene, and been carried through the fair, I’ve been black and blue from the girls coming up and pinching me through the ladder. The girls are wonderfully cheeky at fairs, and all for a lark. They used to get me so precious wild, I couldn’t help coming to life, and say, ‘Quiet, you hussies!’ But it were no good, for they’d follow you all about, and keep on nipping a fellow.

“Another celebrated scene or sketch is the teetotal one, and a rich one it is. Billy is supposed to have joined the temperance parties. He calls for a tub to preach upon, and he says he will consider it a favour if they could let it be a water-butt. They lift Billy on to the tub, and a cove—Clown generally—sits under to take the chair of the meeting. Then the paraders stand about, and I begin: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, waking friends, and lazy enemies, and Mr. Chairman, what I’m about to tell you I’m a stanch teetotaler.’ ‘Hear, hear, hear,’ everybody cries. ‘I have been so for now two—’ and the Clown suggests ‘Years.’ ‘No, minutes. I’d have you avoid water as you would avoid a bull that wasn’t in a chaney-shop.’ ‘Hear, hear, hear.’ ‘I once knew a friend of mine who drank water till he was one solid mass of ice; and he drank tea till the leaves grew out of his nose.’ ‘Oh, oh, hear, hear.’ ‘He got so fat, you couldn’t see him. This, my friends, comes of tea-drinking!’ ‘Hear, hear, hear.’ ‘I hope, kind friends, this will be a lesson to you to avoid drinking too much’—Then the chairman jumps up and says, ‘Beer!’ ‘No, no; tea. Drink in moderation, and never drink more than I do. Two pots of ale, three pints of porter, four glasses of gin, five of rum, and six of brandy, is enough for any man at one time. Don’t drink more, please.’ ‘Hear, hear, hear.’ ‘That will cause you to be in the height of bloom. Your nose will blossom; your eyes will be bright as two burnt holes in a blanket; your head will swell till no hat will fit it. These are facts, my friends; undeniable facts, my kind friends.’ ‘Hear, hear, hear.’ ‘You will get so fat, you’ll take up the pavement to walk. I believe, and I trust, that what I have said will not convince you that teetotalism and coffeetotalism are the best things ever invented. Sign the pledge. The pledge-book is here. You must all pay a penny; and if you don’t keep up your payments, you will be scratched. With these few remarks I now conclude my address to you, hoping that every friend among you is so benevolent as to subscribe a pot of beer. I shall be happy to drink it, to show you how awful a thing it is not to become a teetotaller.’ Then they all rush forward to sign the pledge, and they knock Clown over, and he tumbles Silly Billy into the barrel up to his neck. Then we all sing

And that ends the meeting.

“I was in Greenwich fair, doing Silly Billy, when the celebrated disturbance with the soldiers took place. I was at Smith and Webster’s booth (Richardson’s that was), and our clown was Paul Petro. He had been a bit of a fighting man. He was bending down for Silly Billy to take a jump over him, and some of the soldiers ran up and took the back. They knocked his back as they went over, and he got shirtey. Then came a row. Four of them pitched into Paul, and he cries out for help. The mob began to pelt the soldiers, and they called out to their comrades to assist them. A regular confusion ensued. The soldiers tumbled us about, and took off their belts. They cut Paul’s forehead right open. I was Silly Billy, and I got a broomstick, and when one of the soldiers gave me a lick over the face with his belt, I pitched him over on the mob with my broomstick. I was tumbled down the steps among the mob, and hang me if they didn’t pitch into me too! I got the awfullest nose you ever see. There was I, in my long pinafore, a-wiping up the blood, and both my eyes going as black as plums. I cut up a side place, and then I sat down to try and put my nose to rights. Lord, how I did look about for plaster! When I came back there was all the fair a fighting. The fighting-men came out of their booths and let into the soldiers, who was going about flourishing their belts and hitting everybody. At last the police came; two of them was knocked down, and sent back on stretchers: but at last, when a picket was sent for, all the soldiers—there was about forty of them—were walked off. They got from six to nine months’ imprisonment; and those that let into the police, eighteen months. I never see such a sight. It was all up with poor Silly Billy for that fair, for I had to wrap my face up in plaster and flannel, and keep it so for a week.

“I shouldn’t think there were more than a dozen Silly Billys going about at the present time; and out of them there ain’t above three first-raters. I know nearly all of them. When fairs ain’t on they go about the streets, either with schools of tumblers or serenaders; or else they turn to singing at the concerts. To be a good Silly Billy, it requires a man with heaps of funniment and plenty of talk. He must also have a young-looking face, and the taller the man the better for it. When I go out I always do my own gag, and I try to knock out something new. I can take a candle, or a straw, or a piece of gingerbread, or any mortal thing, and lecture on it. At fairs we make our talk rather broad, to suit the audience.

“Our best sport is where a girl comes up on the parade, and stands there before going inside—we have immense fun with her. I offer to marry her, and so does Clown, and we quarrel as to who proposed to the young woman first. I swear she’s my gal, and he does the same. Then we appeal to her, and tell her what we’ll give her as presents. It makes immense fun. The girls always take it in good part, and seem to enjoy it as much as the mob in front. If we see that she is in any ways shy we drop it, for it’s done for merriment, and not to insult; and we always strive to amuse and not to abuse our friends.”

“Billy Barlow,” is another supposed comic character, that usually accompanies either the street-dancers or acrobats in their peregrinations. The dress consists of a cocked-hat and red feather, a soldier’s coat (generally a sergeant’s with sash), white trowsers with the legs tucked into Wellington boots, a large tin eye-glass, and an old broken and ragged umbrella. The nose and cheeks are coloured bright red with vermilion. The “comic business” consists of the songs of the “Merry Month of May,” and “Billy Barlow,” together with a few old conundrums and jokes, and sometimes (where the halfpence are very plentiful) a “comic” dance. The following statement concerning this peculiar means of obtaining a living I had from a man whom I had seen performing in the streets, dressed up for the part, but who came to me so thoroughly altered in appearance that I could hardly recognise him. In plain clothes he had almost a respectable appearance, and was remarkably clean and neat in his attire. Altogether, in his undress, he might have been mistaken for a better kind of mechanic. There was a humorous expression, however, about his mouth, and a tendency to grimace, that told the professional buffoon. “I go about now as Billy Barlow,” he said; “the character of Billy Barlow was originally played at the races by a man who is dead. He was about ten years at the street business, doing nothing else than Billy Barlow in the public thoroughfares, and at fairs and races. He might have made a fortune had he took care on it, sir; but he was a great drunkard, and spent all he got in gin. He died seven years ago—where most of the street-performers ends their days—in the workhouse. He was formerly a potman at some public-house, and got discharged, and then took to singing comic songs about the streets and fairs. The song of ‘Billy Barlow’ (which was very popular then) was among the lot that he sung, and that gave his name. He used to sing, too, the song of ‘I hope I don’t intrude;’ and for that he dressed up as Paul Pry, which is the reason of the old umbrella, the eye-glass, and the white trowsers tucked into the boots, being part of the costume at present. Another of his songs was the ‘Merry Month of May,’ or ‘Follow the Drum;’ and for that he put on the soldier’s coat and cocked-hat and feather, which we wears to this day. After this he was called ‘General Barlow.’ When he died, one or two took to the same kerachter, and they died in the workhouse, like us all. Two months ago I thought I’d take to it myself, as there was a vacancy in the purfession. I have been for thirty years at the street business, off and on. I am fifty now. I was a muffin and biscuit-baker by trade; but, like the rest on us, I got fond of a roving life. My father was a tailor by trade, but took to being a supernumerary at Covent Garden Theayter, where my uncle was a performer, and when I was nine years old I played the part of the child in ‘Pizarro,’ and after that I was one of the devils what danced round my uncle in ‘Mother Goose.’ When I was fourteen year old my uncle apprenticed me to the muffin business, and I stuck to it for five years; but when I was out of my time I made up my mind to cut it, and take to performing. First I played clown at a booth, for I had always a taste for the comic after I had played the devil, and danced round my uncle in the Covent-garden pantomime. Some time after that I took to play the drum and pipes; and since then I have been chiefly performing as musicianer to different street exhibitions. When business is bad in the winter or wet weather, I make sweetmeats, and go about the streets and sell them. I never made muffins since I left the business; you see, I’ve no stove nor shop for that, and never had the means of raising them. Sweetmeats takes little capital—toffy, brandy-balls, and Albert rock isn’t expensive to get up. Besides, I’m known well among the children in the streets, and they likes to patronise the purfession for sweetmeats, even though they won’t give nothing while you’re a performing; I’ve done much the same since I took to the Billy Barlow, as I did before at the street business. We all share alike, and that’s what I did as the drum and pipes. I never dress at home. My wife (I’m a married man) knows the part I play. She came to see me once, and laughed at me fit to bust. The landlord nor the fellow-lodgers where I live—I have a room to myself—ain’t aware of what I do; I sneaks my things out, and dresses at a public-house. It costs us a pot for dressing and a pot for undressing. We has the use of the tap-room for that. I’m like the rest of the world at home—or rather more serious, maybe,—though, thank God, I don’t want for food; things is cheap enough now; and if I can’t get a living at the buffoonery business, why I tries sweetmeats, and between the two I do manage to grab on somehow, and that’s more than many of my purfession can do. My pardner (a street-dancer whom he brought with him) must either dance or starve; and there’s plenty like him in the streets of London. I only know of one other Barlow but me in the business, and he’s only taken to it after me. Some jokes ain’t fit for ladies to listen to, but wot I says is the best-approved jokes—such as has been fashionable for many years, and can’t give no offence to no one. I say to the musician, ‘Well, master, can you tell me why are the Thames Tunnel and Hungerford Suspension Bridge like two joints badly done?’ He’ll say, ‘No, Mr. Barlow;’ and then I give him the answer: ‘Because one is over-done, and the other is under-done.’ Then I raise my umbrella, saying, ‘I think I’m purwided against the weather;’ and as the umbrella is all torn and slit, it raises a laugh. Some days I get six shillings or seven shillings as my share; sometimes not a quarter of the money. Perhaps I may average full eighteen shillings a-week in the summer, or more; but not a pound. In the winter, if there’s a subsistence, that’s all. Joking is not natural to me, and I’m a steady man; it’s only in the way of business, and I leave it on one side when I’ve got my private apparel on. I never think of my public character if I can help it, until I get my show-dress on, and I’m glad to get it off at night; and then I think of my home and children, and I struggle hard for them, and feel disgust oft enough at having been a tom-fool to street fools.”

What are called strolling actors are those who go about the country and play at the various fairs and towns. As long as they are acting in a booth they are called canvas actors; but supposing they stop in a town a few days after a fair, or build up in a town where there is no fair, that constitutes what is termed private business.

“We call strolling acting ‘mumming,’ and the actors ‘mummers.’ All spouting is mumming. A strolling actor is supposed to know something of everything. He doesn’t always get a part given to him to learn, but he’s more often told what character he’s to take, and what he’s to do, and he’s supposed to be able to find words capable of illustrating the character; in fact, he has to ‘gag,’ that is, make up words.

“When old Richardson was alive, he used to make the actors study their parts regularly; and there’s Thorne and Bennett’s, and Douglas’s, and other large travelling concerns, that do so at the present time; but where there’s one that does, there’s ten that don’t. I was never in one that did, not to study the parts, and I have been mumming, on and off, these ten years.

“There’s very few penny gaffs in London where they speak; in fact, I only know one where they do. It ain’t allowed by law, and the police are uncommon sewere. They generally play ballets and dumb acting, singing and dancing, and such-like.

“I never heard of such a thing as a canvas theatre being prosecuted for having speaking plays performed, so long as a fair is going on, but if it builds at other times I have known the mayor to object to it, and order the company away. When we go to pitch in a town, we always, if it’s a quiet one, ask permission of the mayor to let us build.

“The mummers have got a slang of their own, which parties connected with the perfession generally use. It is called ‘mummers’ slang,’ and I have been told that it’s a compound of broken Italian and French. Some of the Romanee is also mixed up with it. This, for instance, is the slang for ‘Give me a glass of beer,’—‘Your nabs sparkle my nabs,’ ‘a drop of beware.’ ‘I have got no money’ is, ‘My nabs has nanti dinali.’ I’ll give you a few sentences.

“‘Parni’ is rain; and ‘toba’ is ground.

“‘Nanti numgare’ is—No food.

“‘Nanti fogare’ is—No tobacco.

“‘Is his nabs a bona pross?’—Is he good for something to drink?

“‘Nanti, his nabs is a keteva homer’—No, he’s a bad sort.

“‘The casa will parker our nabs multi’ means,—This house will tumble down.

“‘Vada the glaze’ is—Look at the window.

“These are nearly all the mummers’ slang words we use; but they apply to different meanings. We call breakfast, dinner, tea, supper, all of them ‘numgare;’ and all beer, brandy, water, or soup, are ‘beware.’ We call everybody ‘his nabs,’ or ‘her nabs.’ I went among the penny-ice men, who are Italian chaps, and I found that they were speaking a lot of mummers’ slang. It is a good deal Italian. We think it must have originated from Italians who went about doing pantomimes.

“Now, the way we count money is nearly all of it Italian; from one farthing up to a shilling is this:—

“‘Patina, nadsa, oni soldi, duey soldi, tray soldi, quatro soldi, chinqui soldi, say soldi, seter soldi, otter soldi, novra soldi, deshra soldi, lettra soldi, and a biouk.’ A half-crown is a ‘metsa carroon;’ a ‘carroon’ is a crown; ‘metsa punta’ is half-a-sovereign; a ‘punta’ is a pound. Even with these few words, by mixing them up with a few English ones, we can talk away as fast as if we was using our own language.

“Mumming at fairs is harder than private business, because you have to perform so many times. You only wear one dress, and all the actor is expected to do is to stand up to the dances outside and act in. He’ll have to dance perhaps sixteen quadrilles in the course of the day, and act about as often inside. The company generally work in shares, or if they pay by the day, it’s about four or five shillings a-day. When you go to get engaged, the first question is, ‘What can you do?’ and the next, ‘Do you find your own properties, such as russet boots, your dress, hat and feathers, &c.?’ Of course they like your dress the better if it’s a showy one; and it don’t much matter about its corresponding with the piece. For instance, Henry the Second, in ‘Fair Rosamond,’ always comes on with a cavalier’s dress, and nobody notices the difference of costume. In fact, the same dresses are used over and over again for the same pieces. The general dress for the ladies is a velvet skirt with a satin stomacher, with a gold band round the waist and a pearl band on the forehead. They, too, wear the same dresses for all the pieces. A regular fair show has only a small compass of dresses, for they only goes to the same places once in a-year, and of course their costumes ain’t remembered.

“The principal fair pieces are ‘Blue Beard,’ ‘Robert, duke of Normandy,’ and ‘Fair Rosamond, or the Bowers of Woodstock.’ I recollect once they played ‘Maria Martin,’ at a fair, in a company I was with, and we played that in cavalier costume; and so we did ‘The Murder at Stanfield Hall,’ Rush’s affair, in dresses of the time of Charles the Second.

“An actor’s share will average for a fair at five shillings a-day, if the fair is anything at all. When we don’t work we don’t get paid, so that if we only do one fair a-week, that’s fifteen shillings, unless we stop to do a day or two private business after the fair.

“‘Fair Rosamond’ isn’t so good a piece as ‘Blue Beard,’ for that’s a great fair piece, and a never-failing draw. Five years ago I was with a company—Star and Lewis were the acting managers. Then ‘Blue Beard’ was our favourite piece, and we played it five fairs out of six. ‘Fair Rosamond’ is too sentimental. They like a comedy man, and the one in ‘Fair Rosamond’ isn’t nothing. They like the secret-chamber scene in ‘Blue Beard.’ It’s generally done by the scene rolling up and discovering another, with skeletons painted on the back, and blue fire. We always carried that scene with us wherever we went, and for the other pieces the same scenes did. At Star’s, our scenes were somewhat about ten feet wide and eight feet high. They all rolled up, and there were generally about four in working order, with the drop curtain, which made five.

“You may put the price of a good fair theatrical booth down at from fifty pounds to two hundred and fifty pounds. There’s some of them more expensive still. For instance, the paintings alone on the front of Douglas’s Shakesperian theatre, must have cost seventy pounds; and his dress must have cost a deal, for he’s got a private theatre at Bolton, and he works them there as well as at fairs.

“The ‘Bottle Imp’ is a very effective fair piece. It opens with a scene of Venice, and Willebald and Albert, which is the comedy man and the juvenile. The comic man’s principal line is, ‘I’ll tell your mother,’ every time Albert wants to go and see his sweetheart, or if he’s doing anything that he thinks improper. In the first act Albert goes to his sweetheart’s house, and the father consents to their union, provided he can gain so many ducats. Albert then finds out a stranger, who is Nicolo, who asks him to gamble with him at dice: Albert says he is poor. Nicolo says he once was poor, but now he has great wealth. He then tells Albert, that if he likes he can be rich too. He says, ‘Have you not heard of imps and bottle imps?’ ‘Stuff!’ says Albert; ‘me, indeed! a poor artist; I have heard of such things, but I heed them not.’ ‘But, boy,’ says Nicolo, ‘I have that in my possession will make you rich indeed; a drop of the elixir in this bottle, rubbed on the outside, will give you all you require; and if ever you wish to part with it, you must sell it for less than you gave.’ He gives three ducats for it, and as he gives the money the demon laughs from the side, ‘Ha! ha! ha! mine, mine!’ Albert looks amazed. Nicolo says, ‘Ah, youth! may you know more happiness than I have whilst I had that in my possession:’ and then he goes off. Albert then tries the power of the bottle. He says, ‘What, ho! I wish for wine,’ and it’s shoved on from the side. As he is drinking, Willebald exclaims, ‘O dear, O dear! I’ve been looking for my master. O that I were only safe back again in Threadneedle-street! I’ll never go hunting pretty girls again. Oh, won’t I tell his mother!’ ‘How now, caitiff!—Leave me!’ says Albert. ‘All right,’ says Willebald; ‘I’ll leave you—won’t I tell your mother!’

“When Willebald goes, Albert wishes for sleep, and the Bottle Imp replies, ‘All your wishes shall be gratified, excepting one. Sleep you cannot have while I am in your possession.’ The demon then seizes him by the throat, and Albert falls on stage, demon exulting over him. Enter Willebald, who, seeing the demon, cries, ‘Murder! murder! Oh, won’t I tell their mothers!’ and that ends the first act.

“In the second and last act, Albert gives Willebald instructions to sell the bottle; ‘but it is to be for less than three ducats.’ Willebald says, ‘No marine-storekeeper would give three ducats for an old bottle;’ but he goes off shouting, out ‘Who’ll buy a bottle? Who’ll buy a bottle?’ In the next scene, Willebald is still shouting his bottle for sale, with folks laughing off stage and dogs barking. He says, ‘Ah! laugh away. It’s well to be merry, but I’m obliged to cry—Who’ll buy a bottle?’ He then says he’s ‘not going walking about all day selling a bottle;’ and then he says he’s got two ducats, and he’ll buy the bottle himself, sooner than trudge about Venice. Then he says, ‘Oh, Mr. Bottle, here are the ducats; now you are mine.’ Then the demon cries, ‘Mine, mine!’ He says it was only the wind. Then he says, ‘Oh, how I wish I was at home again, and heard my little brothers and sisters singing!’ And instantly from the sides you hear, ‘Boys and girls come out to play!’ Then Willebald says, ‘I wish you’d hold your tongue, you little brutes!’ and they cease. Next he complains that he’s so poor, and he wishes it would rain gold on him, and then down comes a shower. Then in comes Albert, who asks whether the bottle has been sold; and Willebald replies that it’s all right. ‘Thank heavens,’ cries Albert; ‘but yet I pity the miserable wretch who has bought it.’ ‘What do you mean? O dear, O dear! to frighten one so! I’ll tell your mother!’ ‘Know ye not, caitiff!’ continues Albert, ‘that that bottle contains a demon? O what a weight hast thou removed from my heart!’ As Willebald is deploring his lot, enter a poor man, who asks for a drink of water; and Willebald tells him he can’t give him any water, but he has an elixir he shall have very cheap. The old man replies that he hasn’t got more than a petani, which is the sixtieth part of a farthing. However, Willebald sells him the bottle; and as it’s the smallest coin in the world, and the bottle can’t go no cheaper, the demon rushes in and seizes the beggar, who turns out to be Nicolo, the first who sold the bottle. As he is being carried off, Willebald cries out, ‘For shame, you ugly devil! to treat the old gentleman like that! Won’t I tell your mother!’ and down comes the curtain.

“The ‘Bottle Imp’ is a very successful romantic drama. There’s plenty of blue fire in it. The ‘Bottle Imp’ have it at every entrance that fellow do. There is some booths that are fonder of the ‘Bottle Imp’ than any other piece. We played it at Bill Weale’s theatre more than any other drama. The imp is always acted by a man in a cloak with a mask on. You can see his cavalier boots under his cloak, but that don’t matter to holiday folk when once they know it’s intended to be a demon.

“It’s a very jolly life strolling, and I wouldn’t leave it for any other if I had my choice. At times it’s hard lines; but for my part I prefer it to any other. It’s about fifteen shillings a-week for certain. If you can make up your mind to sleep in the booth, it ain’t such bad pay. But the most of the men go to lodgings, and they don’t forget to boast of it. ‘Where do you lodge?’ one’ll ask. ‘Oh, I lodged at such a place,’ says another; for we’re all first-rate fellows, if you can get anybody to believe us.

“Mummers’ feed is a herring, which we call a pheasant. After performance we generally disperse, and those who have lodgings go to ’em; but if any sleep in the booth, turn in. Perhaps there’s a batch of coffee brought forwards, a subscription supper of three. The coffee and sugar is put in a kettle and boiled up, and then served up in what we can get: either a saucepan lid, or a cocoa-nut shell, or a publican’s pot, or whatever they can get. Mummers is the poorest, flashest, and most independent race of men going. If you was to offer some of them a shilling they’d refuse it, though the most of them would take it. The generality of them is cobblers’ lads, and tailors’ apprentices, and clerks, and they do account for that by their having so much time to study over their work.

“Private business is a better sort of acting. There we do nearly the entire piece, with only the difficult parts cut out. We only do the outline of the story, and gag it up. We’ve done various plays of Shakspeare in this way, such as ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Othello,’ but only on benefit occasions. Then we go as near as memory will let us, but we must never appear to be stuck for words. Our prices of admission in the country for private business is threepence and sixpence, or sometimes sixpence or one shilling, for it all depends upon the town, but in London it’s oftener one penny and twopence. We only go to the outskirts and act there, for they won’t allow us in the streets. The principal parts for pitching the booth for private business in London, is about Lock’s-fields, Walworth. We opened there about six years ago last Easter.

“Our rehearsals for a piece are the funniest things in the world. Perhaps we are going to play ‘The Floating Beacon, or The Weird Woman of the Wreck.’ The manager will, when the night’s performance is over, call the company together, and he’ll say to the low-comedyman, ‘Now, you play Jack Junk, and this is your part: you’re supposed to fetch Frederick for to go to sea. Frederick gets capsized in the boat, and gets aboard of the floating beacon. You go to search for him, and the smugglers tell you he’s not aboard, and they give you the lie; then you say, ‘What, the lie to a English sailor!’ and you chuck your quid in his eye, saying, ‘I’ve had it for the last fourteen days, and now I scud it with a full sail into your lubberly eye.’ Then you have to get Frederick off.’

“Then the manager will turn to the juvenile, and say, ‘Now, sir, you’ll play Frederick. Now then, Frederick, you’re in love with a girl, and old Winslade, the father, is very fond of you. You get into the boat to go to the ship, and you’re wrecked and get on to the beacon. You’re very faint, and stagger on, and do a back fall. You’re picked up by the weird woman, and have some dialogue with her; and then you have some dialogue with the two smugglers, Ormaloff and Augerstoff. You pretend to sleep, and they’re going to stab you, when the wild woman screams, and you awake and have some more dialogue. Then they bring a bottle, and you begin drinking. You change the cups. Then there’s more dialogue, and you tackle Ormaloff. Then you discover your mother and embrace. Jack Junk saves you. Form a picture with your mother, the girl, and old Winslade, and Jack Junk over you.’

“That’s his part, and he’s got to put it together and do the talk.

“Then the manager turns to Ormaloff and Augerstoff, and says: ‘Now, you two play the smugglers, do you hear? You’re to try and poison the young fellow, and you’re defeated.’

“Then he say to the wild woman: ‘You’re kept as a prisoner aboard the beacon, where your husband has been murdered. You have refused to become the wife of Ormaloff. Your child has been thrown overboard. You discover him in Frederick, and you scream when they are about to stab him, and also when he’s about to drink. Make as much of it as you can, please; and don’t forget the scream.’

“‘Winslade, you know your part. You’ve only got to follow Junk.’

“‘You’re to play the lady, you Miss. You’re in love with Frederick. You know the old business: ‘What! to part thus? Alas! alas! never to this moment have I confessed I love you!’’

“That’s a true picture of a mumming rehearsal, whether it’s fair or private business. Some of the young chaps stick in their parts. They get the stage-fever and knocking in the knees. We’ve had to shove them on to the scene. They keep on asking what they’re to say. ‘Oh, say anything!’ we tell ’em, and push ’em on to the stage.

“If a man’s not gifted with the gab, he’s no good at a booth. I’ve been with a chap acting ‘Mary Woodbine,’ and he hasn’t known a word of his part. Then, when he’s stuck, he has seized me by the throat, and said, ‘Caitiff! dog! be sure thou provest my wife unfaithful to me.’ Then I saw his dodge, and I said, ‘Oh, my lord!’ and he continued—‘Give me the proof, or thou hadst best been born a dog.’ Then I answered, ‘My lord, you wrong your wife, and torture me;’ and he said, ‘Forward, then, liar! dog!’ and we both rushed off.

“We were acting at Lock’s-fields, Walworth, once, doing private business, when we got into trouble, and were all put into prison for playing without a license. We had built up in a piece of private ground—in a dust-yard known as Calf’s—and we had been there eleven months doing exceedingly well. We treated the policeman every night, and gave him as much, with porter and money, that was equal to one shilling a-night, which was taken up from the company. It was something like a penny a-piece for the policeman, for we were rather afraid of something of the kind happening.

“It was about the time that ‘Oliver Twist’ was making such a success at the other theatres, and so we did a robbery from it, and brought out our version as ‘The Golden Farmer.’ Instead of having an artful dodge, we called our comic character Jimmy Twitcher, and made him do all the artful-dodgery business. We had three performances a-night in those days. We was in our second performance, and Jimmy Twitcher was in the act of getting through the window, and Hammer, the auctioneer, was asleep, saying in his sleep, ‘Knock ’em down! going! going! gone!’ when I saw the police in private clothes rising from the front seats, and coming towards the stage. They opened the side door, and let the other police in, about forty of them. Then the inspector said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I forbid any of you to move, as I arrest those people for performing without a license.’ Nobody moved. Three police took hold of me, one at each arm, and one at the back of the neck. They wouldn’t allow us to change our dresses, nor to take our other clothes, though they were close by. They marched us off to the Walworth station, along with about a hundred of the spectators, for some of them got away. My wife went to fetch my clothes for me, and they took her, too, and actually locked her up all night, though she was so near her pregnancy that the doctor ordered her pillows to sleep on. In the morning they took us all before the magistrate. The audience were fined one shilling a-head, or seven days; but they paid the shilling. We were all fined twenty shillings, or fourteen days. Some paid, but I couldn’t raise it, so I was walked off.

“We were all in an awful fright when we found ourselves in the police-cell that night. Some said we should get six months, others twelve, and all we could say was, ‘What on earth will our old women do?’

“We were all in our theatrical costumes. I was Hammer, the auctioneer, dressed in a long white coat, with the swallow-tails touching the ground, and blue bottoms. I had a long figured chintz waistcoat, and a pair of drab knee-breeches, grey stockings, and low shoes, and my hat was a white one with a low crown and broad brim, like a Quaker’s. To complete it, I wore a full bushy wig. As we were being walked off from Walworth to Kennington-lane, to go before the magistrate, the tops of the houses and the windows were full of people, waiting to see us come along in our dresses. They laughed more than pitied us. The police got pelted, and I caught a severe blow by accident, from a turnip out of a greengrocer’s shop.

“I served all the time at Kingston, in my theatrical dress. I had nothing but bread and water all the time, with gruel for breakfast and supper. I had to pick oakum and make mats. I was only there two days before I was made deputy-wardsman, for they saw I was a decent sort of fellow. I was very much cut up, thinking of the wife so near her confinement. It was very hard, I thought, putting us in prison for getting our bread, for we never had any warning, whatever our master may have had. I can tell you, it was a nail in my coffin, these fourteen days, and one of us, of the name of Chau, did actually die through it, for he was of a very delicate constitution, and the cold laid hold of him. Why, fellows of our life and animation, to be shut up like that, and not allowed to utter a word, it was dreadful severe.

“At this time a little penny work came out, entitled the ‘Groans of the Gallows.’ I was working at an establishment in Whitechapel, and it was thought that something fresh would be a draw, and it was suggested that we should play this ‘Groans of the Gallows,’ for everything about hanging was always a hit. There was such a thing as ten people in the piece, and five was prominent characters. We got it written by one of the company, and it was called ‘The Groans of the Gallows, or The Hangman’s Career, illustrated with pictures.’ This is how we brought it out. After an overture, the curtain rose and discovered a group on the stage, all with pots and pipes, gin measures, &c. They sing, ‘We won’t go home till morning,’ and ‘Kightly’s a jolly good fellow.’ Here the hangman is carousing with them, and his wife comes in and upbraids him with his intoxicating habits, and tells him that he spends all the money instead of purviding food for the children. A quarrel ensues, and he knocks her down with a quart pot and kills her. I was the hangman. There is then a picture of amazement from all, and he’s repenting of what he’s done. He then says, ‘This comes of a little drinking. From the half-pint to the pint, from the pint to the pot, and so on, till ruin stares me in the face. Not content with starving my children, I have murdered my wife. Oh that this may be a moral to all!’

“The officers come in and arrest him, when enters the sheriff, who tells him that he has forfeited his life; but that there is a vacancy for the public executioner, and that if he will accept the office his life shall be spared. He accepts the office, and all the characters groan at him. This ends the first scene. In the second enters Kightly and two officers, who have got him and accuse him of murder. He is taken off proclaiming his innocence. Scene the third. Kightly discovered at table in condemned cell, a few months supposing to have elapsed. The bell is tolling, and the hour of seven is struck. Enter sheriffs with hangman, and they tell him to do his duty. They then leave him, and he speaks thus: ‘At length, then, two little months only have elapsed, and you, my friend and pot-companion, aye, and almost brother, are the first victim that I have to execute for murder,’—and I shudder you know—‘which I know you are innocent of. Am I not a murderer, and do I not deserve hanging more than you? but the law will have it’s way, and I, the tool of that law, must carry it into force. It now becomes my painful duty to pinion your arms.’ Then I do so, and it makes such a thrill through the house. ‘I now take you from this place to your execution, where you will be suspended for one hour, and then it is my duty to cut you down. Have you any request to make?’ He cries ‘None!’ and I add, ‘Then follow me.’ I always come on to that scene with a white night-cap and a halter on my arm. All the audience was silent as death as I spoke, and with tears in their eyes. Scene the fourth. Gallows being erected by workmen. That’s a picture, you know, our fixing the top beam with a hammer, another at the bottom, and a third arranging the bolt at the top. The bell still tolling, you know. Ah, it brought it home to one or two of them, I can tell you. As soon as the workmen have finished they go off. Enter procession of sheriff, parson, hangman, and the victim, with two officers behind. The parson asks the victim if he has any request to make, and he still says ‘None,’ only he is innocent. The sheriffs then tell the hangman to do his duty. He then places the white cap over the man’s head, and the noose about his neck, and is about leaving to draw the bolt, when I exclaim, ‘Something here tells me that I ought not to hang this man. He is innocent, and I know it. I cannot, and I will not take his life.’ Enter officer in haste, with pardon for Kightly. I then say, ‘Kightly, you are free; live and be happy, and I am——’ Here the sheriff adds, ‘Doomed to the galleys for life.’ That’s because I refused to kill him, you know. I then exclaim, ‘Then I shall be happy, knowing that I have not taken this man’s life, and be thus enabled to give up the office of executioner and it’s most horrid paraphernalia.’ Then there’s blue fire and end of piece.

“That piece was very successful, and run for three weeks. It drew in a deal of money. The boys used to run after me in the streets and call me Calcraft, so great was the hit I made in the part. On one occasion a woman was to be hung, and I was going along Newgate, past the prison, on the Sunday evening. There was a quantity of people congregated, and some of the lads then recognised me from seeing me act in the ‘Groans from the Gallows,’ and they sung out ‘Here comes Calcraft!’ Every eye was turned towards me. Some said, ‘No, no; that ain’t him;’ but the boys replied, ‘Oh, yes it is; that’s the man that played it at the gaff.’ Of course I mizzled, for fear of a stone or two.

“The pay of an actor in private business varies from two shillings and sixpence to three shillings, and each man is also supposed to sing two songs in each performance, which makes three performances a night besides performing a sketch. Your engagement lasts as long as you suit the audience; for if you’re a favourite you may have such a thing as nine months at a time. Whenever we have a benefit it’s a ticket one, which amounts to two hundred tickets and your night’s salary, which generally brings you in a pound, with your pay included. There’s one in the company generally has a benefit every Thursday, so that your turn comes once in about six months, for the musicians, and the checktakers, and all has their turn.

“The expense of putting a new piece on the stage is not more than a pound, and that includes new scenery. They never do such a thing as buy new dresses. Perhaps they pay such a thing as six shillings a-week for their wardrobe to hire the dresses. Some gives as much as ten shillings; but then, naturally, the costume is more showy. All that we are supposed to find is russet boots, a set of fleshings, a ballet shirt, and a wig.

“Town work is the more quiet and more general-business like. There’s no casualty in it, for you’re not in shares, but on salaries, and after your work there’s your money, for we are paid nightly. I have known as much as thirty-five shillings a-week given at one of these theatres, when the admission is only a penny and twopence. Where I was at it would hold from six to seven hundred people, and there was three performances a-night; and, indeed, on Saturdays and Mondays generally four. We have no extra pay for extra performances. The time allowed for each representation is from one hour to an hour and three-quarters. If we find there is a likelihood of a fourth house, we leave out a song each singer, and that saves half an hour. As soon as one house is turned out another comes in, for they are always waiting outside the doors, and there is a rush immediately the house is empty. We begin at six and are over by a few minutes before twelve. When we do speaking pieces we have to do it on the sly, as we should be stopped and get into trouble.”

“The Ballet,” said a street-dancer to me, “is a very favourite amusement with the people who go to cheap penny theatres. They are all comic, like pantomimes; indeed, they come under that term, only there’s no comic scenes or transformations. They’re like the story of a pantomime, and nothing else. Nearly all the popular clowns are famous for their ballet performances; they take the comic parts mostly, and the pantaloons take the old men’s parts. Ballets have been favourites in this country for forty or fifty year. There is always a comic part in every ballet. I have known ballets to be very popular for ever since I can remember,—and that’s thirty years. At all the gaffs, where they are afraid to speak their parts, they always have a ballet. Every one in London, and there are plenty of them, have one every night, for it’s very seldom they venture upon a talking play.

“In all ballets the costume is fanciful. The young ladies come on in short petticoats, like them at the opera. Some of the girls we have are the same as have been in the opera corps-de-ballet. Mr. Flexmore, the celebrated clown, is a ballet performer, and there’s not a greater man going for the ballet that he appears in, called ‘The Dancing Scotchman.’ There’s Paul Herring, too; he’s very famous. He’s the only man I know of that can play Punch, for he works the speaker in his mouth; and he’s been a great Punch-and-Judy man in his time. He’s very clever in ‘The Sprite of the Vineyard, or the Merry Devil of Como.’ They’ve been playing it at Cremorne lately, and a very successful affair it was.

“When a professional goes to a gaff to get an engagement, they in general inquires whether he is a good ballet performer. Everything depends upon that. They also acts ballets at some of the concert-rooms. At the Rising Sun, Knightsbridge, as well as the Brown Bear, Knightsbridge, they play them for a week at a time, and then drop them for a fortnight for a change, and perhaps have tumblers instead; then they have them again for a week, and so on. In Ratcliffe Highway, at Ward’s Hoop and Grapes, and also the Albion, and the Prince Regent, they always play ballets at stated intervals. Also the Effingham Saloon, Whitechapel, is a celebrated ballet-house. The admission to all these houses is 2d. I believe. At the Highway, when the ships are up and the sailors ashore, business is very brisk, and they are admitted to the rooms gratuitously; and a fine thing they make of them, for they are good-hearted fellows and don’t mind what money they spend. I’ve known one who was a little way gone to chuck half-a-crown on the stage to some actor, and I’ve known others to spend a pound at one bit,—standing to all round! One night, when I was performing ballets at the Rising Sun, Knightsbridge, Mr. Hill, the Queen’s coachman, threw me two half-crowns on to the stage. We had been supposed to be fighting,—I and my mate,—and to have got so exhausted we fell down, and Mr. Hill came and poured three glasses of port-wine negus down our throats as we laid. I’ve repeatedly had 1s. and 6s. thrown to me by the grooms of the different people of nobility, such as the Russells and various other families.

“A good ballet performer will get averaging from a pound to 35s. a-week. They call Paul Herring a star, and he is one, for he always draws wherever he goes. I generally get my 25s., that’s my running price, though I try for my 30s.; but 25s. is about my mark. I have always made Paul Herring my study, and I try to get to perform with him, for he’s the best clown of the day, and a credit to work with.

“It’s impossible to say how many ballet performers there are. There are such a host of them it’s impossible to state that, for they change so. Then a great many are out of employment until Christmas, for that generally fills the vacancies up. My wife does a little in ballets, though she is principally a poses plastique girl. I married my wife off the table.

“One of the most successful ballets is the Statue Blanche. It has been performed at every theatre in London, both the cheap and the regular. The Surrey is an enormous place for it. It came out, I believe, in Grimaldi’s time. It was played a fortnight ago at the Bower, and I took the part of the old man, and I was very successful; so far so, that I got a situation for Christmas. It’s an excellent plot, and runs an hour and a quarter to play.

“It begins with a romantic view, with a cottage on the right hand, and white palings round it, and a quantity of straw laying on the stage. The villagers and the lover come on. Lover goes to cottage door and knocks three times, when lady appears at window. He ballets to her, ‘Will you come down here and dance?’ She comes, and they all do a country dance. At the end of the dance the old man is heard to cough inside cottage. He opens the window and sees the girl outside, and shakes his fist at her. The lover hides behind the lady. He comes out and sends his daughter into cottage, and sends the lover off about his business. He refuses to do so. The old man makes a blow at him with his stick; he makes another, when lover bobs down and stick strikes Pierrot in the face, and knocks him down. This Pierrot is the Simpkin of the ballet, and he’s dressed in white, with long sleeves, and a white face, and white scalp on his head. The ballet is from the French, and its real title is ‘La Statue Blanche,’ though we call it ‘The Statue Blanche.’

“Lover is driven off stage, and old man picks up Simpkin, and ballets to him that he’s very sorry but he thought it was the lover, and tells him to hide under the straw which is on the stage, and that if the lover comes again to lay hold of him, to call assistance. He hides, and old man goes into cottage.

“Lover comes again with villagers carrying flails, and they begin to thresh this straw with Simpkin under it. They thresh him round stage. He knocks at door three times, and the third blow knocks old man in the face. Out he comes staggering. The old man threatens to sack lover. He goes into cottage and brings out lover’s bundle, and throws it to lover, and sends him away. The lover appeals to old man, but all to no use. The lover then ballets to him that he has got no money, so the old man hands his purse, which Simpkin takes and carries up stage. The lover still asks for money, and the old man is astonished, and then turns round and sees Simpkin, and makes him return it. Exit old man and Simpkin into cottage, leaving lover on stage. He leans against wing very disconsolate, when an artist comes on with a scrap-book to sketch the scene. He asks the lover what is the matter, and then he tells him he has a plan if lover will become a sketcher; and if he likes to do so, he will make a statue of him and sell him to the old man, as he deals in antiquities, and by that plan he will be able to gain the girl. They go off, and another old man comes on and knocks at door, which old father opens, and thinking it is lover tumbles him over. He then says he’s very sorry for mistaking him for the lover. They make it up, and the old man says he has plenty of money, and has come to marry the daughter. They embrace, and old father invites old man to step inside and have something to drink. As the second old man is going in, the Simpkin jumps over his head and hides; and old man swears it is the lover, and hunts for him, but can’t find him, and enters cottage. The second scene has got the tea business in it, and the blacking of the old lover’s face. The comic business here is, they are having tea, and Simpkin is waiting on them, and does every thing very clumsy. He carries on the old business of stirring the tea up with a candle, and then he puts the dirty kettle on the cloth and makes a mark; so he thinks for a minute, and then wipes the bottom of the kettle with the old lover’s handkerchief when he is not looking. Then Simpkin steals the milk-jug, and as he is drinking the old father hits him on the stomach, and makes him sputter in old lover’s face, who instantly snatches up the dirty handkerchief to wipe his face, and blacks it all over with the soot from the bottom of the kettle. Then there is some comic business about Simpkin breaking the tea-things, and bursting a coat in two; and then scene changes to a romantic view, with a pedestal in the centre, and statue on it. The old father comes on with the girl and Simpkin, and the villagers, who have all come to view the statue. The old man then calls the artist, and tells him to wind up the statue that he may see how it works. The statue does several positions, and the old man buys it. They all go off but Simpkin, the lady, and the old man. (The statue is still on the pedestal, you know.) The old man cautions Simpkin not to touch the statue, for he’s going away. As soon as he is gone, Simpkin goes and winds it up until he breaks the spring. Then in comes the old man again, and the fool goes to a corner and pretends to be asleep. He is pulled up by the ear and shown what he has done, and is about to be beaten, when girl intercedes and puts the statue to rights. They go off, leaving Simpkin with the statue. Lady returns, and statue jumps down and embraces her. The statue then takes off his helmet and wig, and chucks it at Simpkin, and rushes off with girl, and the clown mounts the pedestal. Enter old man, who ballets that he’ll have a turn as nobody is there. He goes and looks at statue, and perceives that he is in a different position. He turns the handle and Simpkin jumps about, burlesquing what the lover has done. Then Simpkin jumps down, and pushes the old man round stage with a club in his hand. Old man sings out ‘Murder!’ when lover returns with girl and stops Simpkin from knocking him down. They tell the old man they are married, and he joins their hands, and a general dance winds up the performance.

“That’s one of the most successful ballets ever imagined, and in its time has drawn thousands and thousands to see it. I don’t know who wrote the ballet, but I should imagine it was the property of Grimaldi’s father, who was a great pantomimist.

“There’s a new ballet, called ‘The Dream before the Wedding, or the Ploughboy turned Sailor.’ That one depends more upon the lover than the comic man. There’s another, called ‘The Boatman of the Ohio.’ That’s a comic nigger ballet, in which the banjo and bones are introduced; and there’s a very funny duet song, to the tune of ‘Roley poley.’ They both hide in a clock-case to hide from the old man, and they frighten each other, for they put their ugly black faces out and take each other for the devil. Then there’s ‘The Barber and the Beadle.’ The barber is one of Paul Herring’s favourite characters. I’ve done the beadle to his barber. There’s a very first-rate scene in it with the fop,—Jemmy Green he’s called, a cockney sort of a fellow,—and this barber has to shave him, and cuts his nose, and ties him in a chair, and shoves the soap-suds in his mouth. This fop is arranging with the father about the daughter, and the barber ties a line to a pole and fishes off the old man’s wig. The beadle is the father of the girl. It goes immense. I’ve played in it during my time more than 400 times.

“Another famous ballet is ‘The Cobbler and the Tailor.’ There’s a celebrated fight in that, between the tailor with his sleeve-board and goose, and the cobbler with his clam and his awl. The tailor tries to burn me with the goose, and he hunts me all about. We are about twenty minutes fighting. It’s a never-failing fight, that is. The sleeve-boards are split to make a noise at each knock, and so is the clam. There’s one, two, three, four, and a crack on the nob. We keep it up till both are supposed to fall down exhausted. Then there’s crowing ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo’ at each other. We enjoy it just as much as the audience do, for it’s very funny. Although the shirt is sticking to our backs with perspiration, we enter into the sport quite like them in front. We generally prefer winter for this ballet, for it’s hot work; or if it’s in the open air, like in gardens, then it’s very delightful.

“One of the principal things in ballet performing is to be able to do the raps, or slaps, well and quickly. A fellow gives me a clap on the face in the piece, then I have to slap my hands together, and make a noise as if he had given me a tremendous knock down. Of course, the closer the sound is to the blow, the better is the effect; and the art is to do it close. That’s what we call good working. The people, of course, follow with their eye the fist of the striker, and the one struck has his arms down in front, and claps them together. It is the same work as they do in the pantomimes. Another trick is hitting the knuckles when fighting, also striking on the head. That’s done by holding the stick close to the pate, and that takes the blow. On the knuckles the striker aims just above the fingers. It wants a quick eye. A fellow caught me on the nose, at the Bower, the other night, and took the skin off the tip; and there’s the mark now, you see. The principal distinction between pantomimes and ballets is that there are more cascades, and trips, and valleys in pantomimes, and none in ballets.

“A trip is a dance between Harlequin and the Columbine; and cascades and valleys are trundling and gymnastic performances, such as tumbling across the stage on wheels, and catching hold of hands and twirling round.

“We have done a kind of speaking ballet, where there is a little singing and talking just to help out the plot. It is a kind of pantomime sketch. It is entitled, ‘The Magic Mirror, or how to reclaim a drunken Servant.’ I was the author of it, for I’m generally engaged expressly to get up ballets, and occasionally they expect me to do a new one for them. I get from 25s. to 30s. a-week for such an engagement. The scene opens with a chamber in the front of the stage, with a candle on the table nearly burnt out. The clock strikes four. A servant in livery is waiting up for his other servant. He yawns and does the sleepy business. Then he says, ‘Whenever it is Thomas’s day out he stops so very late; master has threatened to discharge him, and he will get the sack. Would that I could reclaim him! I will endeavour to do so. I wish he would return.’ And that’s the cue for the other one off the stage to begin singing ‘I’ve been roving, I’ve been roving,’ &c. Then the honest servant says, ‘He comes! Now then to form a magic looking-glass, wherein he can see his errors. Now to procure four pieces of timber.’ He does so, and makes a square frame or strainer. ‘Now for a few tacks.’ He gets them, and then takes a gauze curtain down from the window, and places it on the back of the frame, which forms a looking-glass. Then lights is turned down on stage, and he puts a candle behind the mirror, which illuminates this gauze, you see. He then hides behind the glass.

“Thomas comes in very tipsy. He does the drunken business, and then says, ‘I’ve had the best of cheer. I’ve been down to farmer Cheer’s, and had the best of ale, and some good gin, and better brandy;’ at which the man behind the frame echoes, ‘Better brandy.’ Thomas is alarmed. He looks around and says, ‘That was the echo.’ To which the voice replies, ‘That was the echo.’ Then they repeat this business; Thomas getting still more nervous. He says, ‘Well, I declare, I’m getting quite melancholy. I’ll see what singing can do to rouse me a little.’ He then begins,—

“The glass takes up ‘Rosin his bo-o-o-o-w.’ The time this is going on, the other servant is dressing himself to represent the other; combing his hair, and painting his face, and everything. Thomas gets quite I don’t know how; and he says, ‘I wonder if I look frightened?’ And he goes to the glass, and the other appears at the same time, and it looks like the reflection in the glass. I’ve had some fools imagine it was the reflection. Thomas says ‘Oh, I look very nice!’ and as he speaks the other opens his mouth too. Then Thomas says, ‘Why I’ve got some black on my nose!’ and he goes to wipe it, and the form behind imitates him.

“He then goes down the stage and returns to glass again. There’s a deal of business carried on. At last Thomas sees the figure turn round whilst he’s looking in front, and then he exclaims, ‘That’s not me! My waistcoat ain’t split up the back! I’ll smash the glass.’ He knocks down the gauze, and out pops the figure, yelling ‘Ah! I’m the glass imp!’ Thomas falls down on the stage, and as the imp walks about, one off the side at the wing thumps the ground at each step with a piece of wood, to mark the steps. Then the servant says, ‘Fe fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman;’ and Thomas answers, ‘Oh no, Mr. Ghost, I ain’t an Englishman; I’m a Irish woman;’ and there’s a shout at that, of course. The servant continues,—‘Let him be alive, let him be dead,’—and Thomas says ‘I’m as dead as a red herring!’ and there’s another shout. The fellow-servant then catches hold of Thomas by the hair of the head, and tells him to follow him below. Thomas replies ‘Oh don’t! please, don’t, Mr. Ghost! I’ll do anything but follow you below, though you are so good-looking.’ ‘Will you promise to come home early for the future?’ ‘I will.’ ‘And never drink no more brandy nor stout?’ ‘I will.’ The fellow-servant shouts in a hoarse voice, ‘Nay, Slave! not I will, but I will not.’ ‘Not.’ ‘Enough! rise and look at me.’ ‘Oh, I wouldn’t for the world.’ ‘Don’t you know me?’ ‘Oh no! no! no! I never saw you before.’ ‘It’s all right, I’m your friend James: your fellow-servant!’ Then Thomas gets up and sees him, and begins laughing. ‘Oh, I wasn’t frightened: I knew you all the time.’ The other cove then shouts, ‘Fe fi fo fum;’ and down goes Thomas on his face and screams ‘Murder! murder!’ Then James says, ‘Oh, it’s only me; look!’ Then Thomas looks and says, ‘Well, I declare I thought you was the glass imp.’ ‘No, I only played this prank to reclaim you. Has it had its effect?’ ‘It has.’ ‘Then I have gained my end, since you are reformed; and I hope you are reformed.’ ‘I am; and I hope it will be a lesson to my friends in front, and that they will never take a drop too much.’ Then they sing together—

“That pantomimic farce always goes down with wonderful success. It has a regular round of applause, which is everybody clapping as hard as they can. Some of the tavern-keepers, in whose concert-rooms we done this ballet pantomime, don’t much like the wind-up to this piece,—about hoping our friends will take a lesson, and not drink too much. At one place the landlord happened to come just as that line was spoke, and he told me he’d fine me sixpence if I done it again. ‘Why, I ain’t sold a dozen pots of beer through it,’ he says. So I agreed with him to alter the tag to this,—‘and not drink no more than you can carry, for that never did any one any harm, but more is injurious.’ At some of these rooms, if a song is going too long and no drinking, the landlord will come in, and hold his hand up, as a cue for us to leave off and let the drinking begin again. Then the waiters looks the audience up again with their ‘Give your orders, gentlemen; give your orders.’

“This ballet pantomime was quite an innovation, and isn’t strictly ballet, but in the same line.

“Of all ballets, the one that has found the longest run is the ‘Statue Blanche.’ I’ve known it to go a month. All the young ladies in these pieces are regular ballet-girls, and all ‘turned out;’ that is, taught to stand with their dancing position. You know all of them is supposed to be able to kick their nose with their knees. You know they crick them when young, the same as a contortionist or acrobat. They are always practising. You see them in the green-room kicking their legs about. The men have to do the same, except the comic characters that don’t dance. Paul Herring is very clever at these things, and don’t want no practising. He can scratch his head with his foot. He’s the finest clown that ever trod in shoe-leather.

“The green-rooms at the concert-rooms are very tidy. Even at the penny gaffs the men and women have separate rooms. The women there have got their decency the same as at a theatre, and they wouldn’t go there if there wasn’t separate dressing-rooms. In fact, they keep themselves more from the men than the men from them, for they are all madames; and though they only keep a wheelbarrow, they carry themselves as if they had a coach.

“At the concert-rooms they have always a useful set of scenery, about similar to that at the penny gaffs. At some of them you don’t get so good scenery as at the gaffs. There’s in general a romantic scene, and a cottage, and so forth, and that’s all that’s wanted. There’s a regular proscenium to the theatres, with lights in front and all. The most usual manner is to have a couple of figures at the sides holding lights, and curtains behind them, because it answers for the ballets and also for the singing. At some of the concert-rooms there’s no side-entrance to the stage, and then you have to go across the audience dressed in your costume, before you can get on to the stage. It’s horrid, that is. I’ve done it many and many a time at Knightsbridge. It’s very bad, for everything depends upon being discovered when the curtain draws up. Some of the people will say, ‘Oh, that’s nothing; I’ve seen him before.’

“I have repeatedly seen people in front go to the stage and offer their glass to the actor to drink. We are forbid to receive them, because it interferes with business; but we do take it. I’ve seen drink handed on to the stage from three to four times a-night.

“Sometimes, when a dance has pleased the audience, or an acrobat, or a bottle equilibrist, they’ll throw halfpence on to the stage, to reward the performer. We sometimes do this for one another, so as to give the collection a start. We are forbidden to take money when it is thrown on to us, but we do. If a sixpence comes, we in general clap our foot on to it, and then your mate gives you a rap on the face, and we tumble down and put it in our mouth, so that the proprietor shan’t see us. If he saw it done, and he could find it, he’d take it away if he could. I have known a man pick up as much as 3s. after a dance. Then there are generally some one who is not engaged on the establishment, and he comes for what we term ‘the nobbings,’ that’s what is throw’d to him. I’ve known a clog-dancer, of the name of Thompson, to earn as much as 10s. of a night at the various concert-rooms. He’s very clever, and may be seen any night at the Hoop and Grapes, Ratcliffe-highway. He does 108 different steps, and 51 of them are on his toes.

“There’s in general from five to six people engaged in a concert-room performances, and for professionals alone that’ll come to from 30s. to 2l. a-night for expenses for actors and singers. That’s putting down nothing for the conductor, or musicians, or gas. Some of them charge 2d. or 1d. admission, but then there’s something extra put on to the drink. Porter is 5d. a pot, and fourpenny ale is charged 6d.; besides, you can’t have less than 6d. worth of gin-and-water. At such a room as the Nag’s Head in Oxford-street, I’ve known as many as from 200 to 300 go there in the evening; and the Standard, Pimlico, will hold from 400 to 450 people, and I’ve seen that full for nights together. There they only have merely a platform, and seldom do ballets, or Grecian statues, dancing, gymnastics, and various other entertainments, such as ventriloquism. There the admission is 4d., and on benefit occasions 6d.”

“I am the father of two little girls who perform on the tight-rope and on stilts. My wife also performs, so that the family by itself can give an entertainment that lasts an hour and a half altogether. I don’t perform myself, but I go about making the arrangements and engagements for them. Managers write to me from the country to get up entertainments for them, and to undertake the speculation at so much. Indeed I am a manager. I hire a place of amusement, and hire it at so much; or if they won’t let it, then I take an engagement for the family. I never fancied any professional work myself, except, perhaps, a bit of sculpture. I am rather partial to the poses plastiques, but that’s all.

“Both my little girls are under eight years of age, and they do the stilt-waltzing, and the eldest does the tight-rope business as well. Their mother is a tight-rope dancer, and does the same business as Madame Sayin used to appear in, such as the ascension on the rope in the midst of fireworks. We had men in England who had done the ascension before Madame Sayin came out at Vauxhall, but I think she was the first woman that ever did it in this country. I remember her well. She lodged at a relation of mine during her engagement at the Gardens. She was a ugly little woman, very diminutive, and tremendously pitted with the small-pox. She was what may be called a horny woman, very tough and bony. I’ve heard my father and mother say she had 20l. a-night at Vauxhall, and she did it three times a-week; but I can’t vouch for this, as it was only hearsay.

“My eldest little girl first began doing the stilts in public when she was three-and-a-half years old. I don’t suppose she was much more than two-and-a-half years old when I first put her on the stilts. They were particularly short, was about four foot from the ground, so that she came to about as high as my arms. It was the funniest thing in the world to see her. She hadn’t got sufficient strength in her knees to keep her legs stiff, and she used to wabble about just like a fellow drunk, and lost the use of his limbs. The object of beginning so soon was to accustom it, and she was only on for a few minutes once or twice a-day. She liked this very much, in fact so much, that the other little ones used to cry like blazes because I wouldn’t let them have a turn at them. I used to make my girl do it, just like a bit of fun. She’d be laughing fit to crack her sides, and we’d be laughing to see her little legs bending about. I had a new dress made for her, with a spangled bodice and gauze skirt, and she always put that on when she was practising, and that used to induce her to the exercise. She was pleased as Punch when she had her fine clothes on. When she wasn’t good, I’d say to her, ‘Very well, miss, since you’re so naughty, you shan’t go out with us to perform; we’ll teach your little sister, and take her with us, and leave you at home.’ That used to settle her in a moment, for she didn’t like the idea of having the other one take her place.

“Some people, when they teach their children for any entertainment, torture the little things most dreadful. There is a great deal of barbarity practised in teaching children for the various lines. It’s very silly, because it only frightens the little things, and some children often will do much more by kindness than ill-usage. Now there are several children that I know of that have been severely injured whilst being trained for the Risley business. Why, bless your soul, a little thing coming down on it’s head, is done for the remainder of it’s life. I’ve seen them crying on the stage, publicly, from being sworn at and bullied, where they would have gone to it laughing, if they had only been coaxed and persuaded.

“Now my little things took to it almost naturally. It was bred and born in them, for my father was in the profession before me, and my wife’s parents were also performers. We had both my little girls on the stilts before they were three years old. It’s astonishing how soon the leg gets accustomed to the stilts, for in less than three months they can walk alone. Of course, for the first six weeks that they are put on we never leave go of their hands. The knees, which at first is weak and wabbly, gets strong, and when once that is used to the pad and stump (for the stilts are fastened on to just where the garter would come), then the child is all right. It does not enlarge the knee at all, and instead of crooking the leg, it acts in a similar way to what we see in a child born with the cricks, with irons on. I should say, that if any of my children have been born knock-kneed, or bow-legged, the stilts have been the means of making their legs straight. It does not fatigue their ankles at all, but the principal strain is on the hollow in the palm of the foot, where it fits into the tread of the stilt, for that’s the thing that bears the whole weight. If you keep a child on too long, it will complain of pain there; but mine were never on for more than twenty minutes at a time, and that’s not long enough to tire the foot. But one gets over this feeling.

“I’ve had my young ones on the stilts amusing themselves in my back-yard for a whole afternoon. They’ll have them on and off three or four times in a hour, for it don’t take a minute or two to put them on. They would put them on for play. I’ve often had them asking me to let them stop away from school, so as to have them on.

“My wife is very clever on the stilts. She does the routine of military exercise with them on. It’s the gun exercise. She takes one stilt off herself, and remains on the other, and then shoulders the stilt she has taken off, and shows the gun practice. She’s the only female stilt-dancer in England now. Those that were with her when she was a girl are all old women now. All of my family waltz and polka on stilts, and play tamborines whilst they dance. The little girls dance with their mother.

“It took longer to teach the children to do the tight-rope. They were five years old before I first began to teach them. The first thing I taught them to walk upon was on a pole passed through the rails at the back of two chairs. When you’re teaching a child, you have not got time to go driving stakes into the ground to fix a rope upon. My pole was a bit of one of my wife’s broken balance-poles. It was as thick as a broom handle, and not much longer. I had to lay hold of the little things’ hands at first. They had no balance-pole to hold, not for some months afterwards. My young ones liked it very much; I don’t know how other persons may. It was bred in them. They couldn’t stand even upright when first they tried it, but after three months they could just walk across it by themselves. I exercised them once every day, for I had other business to attend to, and I’d give them a lesson for just, perhaps, half an hour at dinner time, or of an evening a bit after I came home. My wife never would teach them herself. I taught my wife rope-dancing, and yet I could not do it; but I understood it by theory, though not by experience. I never chalked my young ones’ feet, but I put them on a little pair of canvas pumps, to get the feet properly formed to grasp the rope, and to bend round. My wife’s feet, when she is on the rope, bend round from continual use, so that they form a hollow in the palm of the foot, or the waist of the foot as some call it. My girls’ feet soon took the form. The foot is a little bit tender at first, not to the pole, because that is round and smooth, but the strands of the rope would, until the person has had some practice, blister the foot if kept too long on it. I never kept my young ones on the pole more than twenty minutes at a time, for it tired me more than them, and my arms used to ache with supporting them. Just when they got into the knack and habit of walking on the pole, then I shifted them to a rope, which I fixed up in my back-yard. The rope has to be a good cable size, about one-and-a-half inches in diameter. I always chalked the rope; chalk is of a very rough nature, and prevents slipping. The sole of the pump is always more or less hard and greasy. We don’t rough the soles of the pumps, for the rope itself will soon make them rough, no matter how bright they may have been. My rope was three feet six inches from the ground, which was a comfortable height for me to go alongside of the children. I didn’t give them the balance-pole till they were pretty perfect without it. It is a great help, is the pole. The one my wife takes on the rope with her is eighteen feet long. Some of the poles are weighted at both ends, but ours are not. My young ones were able to dance on the rope in a twelvemonth’s time. They wern’t a bit nervous when I highered the rope in my yard. I was underneath to catch them. They seemed to like it.

“They appeared in public on the tight-rope in less than a twelvemonth from their first lesson on the broom-stick on the backs of the chairs. My girl had done the stilts in public when she was only three years and six months old, so she was accustomed to an audience. It was in a gardens she made her first performance on the rope, and I was under her in case she fell. I always do that to this day.

“Whenever I go to fairs to fulfil engagements, I always take all my own apparatus with me. There is the rope some twenty yards long, and then there’s the pulley-blocks for tightening it, and the cross-poles for fixing it up, and the balance-poles. I’m obliged to have a cart to take them along. I always make engagements, and never go in shares, for I don’t like that game. I could have lots of jobs at that game if I liked. There’s no hold on the proprietor of the show. There’s a share taken for this, and a share for this, so that before the company come to touch any money, twenty shares are gone out of thirty, and only ten left for the performers. I have had a pound a-day for myself and family at a fair. At the last one I went to, a week ago, we took somewhere about 25s. a-day. When it isn’t too far from London, we generally come home at night, but otherwise we go to a tavern, and put up there.

“I only go to circuses when we are at fairs. I never had a booth of my own. The young ones and my wife walk about the parade to make a show of the entire company, but unless business is very bad, and a draw is wanted, my little ones don’t appear on the stilts. They have done so, of course, but I don’t like them to do so, unless as a favour.

“In the ring, their general performance is the rope one time, and then reverse it and do the stilts. My wife and the girls all have their turns at the rope, following each other in their performances. The band generally plays quadrilles, or a waltz, or anything; it don’t matter what it is, so long as it is the proper time. They dance and do the springs in the air, and they also perform with chairs, seating themselves on it whilst on the rope, and also standing up on the chair. They also have a pair of ladders, and mount them. Then again they dance in fetters. I am there underneath, in evening costume, looking after them. They generally wind up their tight-rope performance by flinging away the balance-pole, and dancing without it to quick measure.

“One of my little girls slipped off once, but I caught her directly as she came down, and she wasn’t in the least frightened, and went on again. I put her down, and she curtsied, and ran up again. Did she scream? Of course not. You can’t help having a slip off occasionally.

“When they do the stilts, the young ones only dance waltzes and polkas, and so on. They have to use their hands for doing the graceful attitudes. My wife, as I said before, does the gun exercise besides dancing, and it’s always very successful with the audience, and goes down tremendously. The performances of the three takes about twenty minutes, I think, for I never timed it exactly. I’ve been at some fairs when we have done our performances eighteen times a-day, and I’ve been at some where I’ve only done it four or six, for it always depends upon what business is being done. That’s the truth. When the booth is full, then the inside performance begins, and until it is, the parade work is done. There are generally persons engaged expressly to do the parade business.

“I never knew my girls catch cold at a fair, for they are generally held in hot weather, and the heat is rather more complained of than the cold. My young ones put on three or four different dresses during a fair—at least mine do. I don’t know what others do. Each dress is a different colour. There is a regular dressing-room for the ladies under the parade carriages, and their mother attends to them.

STREET-PERFORMERS ON STILTS.

[From a Sketch.]

“Very often after their performances they get fruit and money thrown to them into the ring. I’ve known seven or eight shillings to be thrown to them in coppers and silver, but it’s seldom they get more than a shilling or so. I’ve known ladies and gentlemen wait for them when they went to take off their dresses after they have done, and give them five or six shillings.

“When we go to fairs, I always pack the young ones off to bed about nine, and never later than ten. They don’t seem tired, and would like to stop up all night, I should think. I don’t know how it is with other kids.

“I send my young ones to school every day when there is no business on, and they are getting on well with their schooling. When we go to a country engagement, then I send them to a school in the town if we stop any time.

“Ours is, I think, the only family doing the rope-dancing and stilt-vaulting. I don’t know of any others, nor yet of any other children at all who do it.

“Stilt-vaulting is dying out. You never see any children going about the streets as you did formerly. There never was so much money got as at that stilt-vaulting in the streets. My wife’s family, when she was young, thought nothing of going out of an afternoon, after dinner, and taking their three or four pounds. They used to be as tall up as the first-floor windows of some of the houses. It must be very nearly twenty years since I remember the last that appeared. It isn’t that the police would stop it, but there’s nobody to do it. It’s a very difficult thing to do, is walking about at that tremendous height. If you fall you’re done for. One of my little ones fell once—it was on some grass, I think—but she escaped without any hurt, for she was light, and gathered herself up in a heap somehow.

“There used to be a celebrated Jellini family, with a similar entertainment to what I give. They were at the theatres mostly, and at public gardens, and so on. They used to do ballets on stilts, and had great success. That must be forty years ago. There used to be the Chaffs family too, who went about the streets on stilts. They had music with them, and danced in the public thoroughfares. Now there is nothing of the kind going on, and it’s out of date.

“I have been abroad, in Holland, travelling with a circus company. I’ve also visited Belgium. The children and my wife were very much liked wherever they went. I was on an engagement then, and we had 11l. a-week, and I was with them seven weeks. They paid our travelling expenses there, and we paid them home.”

Street reciters are somewhat scarce now-a-days, and I was a long time before meeting with one; for though I could always trace them through their wanderings about the streets, and learn where they had been seen the night before, still I could never find one myself. I believe there are not more than ten lads in London,—for they seem to be all lads,—who are earning a livelihood by street-reciting.

At length I heard that some street actors, as they call themselves, lived in a court in the City. There were two of them—one a lad, who was dressed in a man’s ragged coat and burst boots, and tucked-up trowsers, and seemingly in a state of great want; and the other decently enough attired in a black paletot with a flash white-and-red handkerchief, or “fogle,” as the costermongers call it, jauntily arranged so as to bulge over the closely-buttoned collar of his coat. There was a priggish look about the latter lad, while his manner was “cute,” and smacked of Petticoat-lane; and though the other one seemed to slink back, he pushed himself saucily forward, and at once informed me that he belonged “to the profession” of street declaimer. “I and this other boy goes out together,” he said, as he took a short pipe from his mouth; and in proof of his assertion, he volunteered that they should on the spot give me a specimen of their histrionic powers.

I preferred listening to the modest boy. He was an extremely good-looking lad, and spoke in a soft voice, almost like a girl’s. He had a bright, cheerful face, and a skin so transparent and healthy, and altogether appeared so different from the generality of street lads, that I felt convinced that he had not long led a wandering life, and that there was some mystery connected with his present pursuits. He blushed when spoken to, and his answers were nervously civil.

When I had the better-natured boy alone with me, I found that he had been well educated; and his statement will show that he was born of respectable parents, and the reason why he took to his present course of life. At first he seemed to be nervous, and little inclined to talk; but as we became better acquainted, he chatted on even faster than my pen could follow. He had picked up several of the set phrases of theatrical parlance, such as, “But my dream has vanished in air;” or, “I felt that a blight was on my happiness;” and delivered his words in a romantic tone, as though he fancied he was acting on a stage. He volunteered to show me his declamatory powers, and selected “Othello’s Apology.” He went to the back of the room, and after throwing his arms about him for a few seconds, and looking at the ceiling as if to inspire himself, he started off.

Whilst he had been chatting to us his voice was—as I said before—like a girl’s; but no sooner did he deliver his, “Most potent, grave, and reverend Signiors,” than I was surprised to hear him assume a deep stomachic voice—a style evidently founded upon the melo-dramatic models at minor theatres. His good-looking face, however, became flushed and excited during the delivery of the speech, his eyes rolled about, and he passed his hands through his hair, combing it with his fingers till it fell wildly about his neck like a mane.

When he had finished the speech he again relapsed into his quiet ways, and resuming his former tone of voice, seemed to think that an apology was requisite for the wildness of his acting, for he said, “When I act Shakspeare I cannot restrain myself,—it seems to master my very soul.”

He had some little talent as an actor, but was possessed of more memory than knowledge of the use of words. Like other performers, he endeavoured to make his “points” by dropping his voice to almost a whisper when he came to the passage, “I’ faith ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange.”

In answer to my questions he gave me the following statement:—

“I am a street reciter, that is, I go about the streets and play Shakspeare’s tragedies, and selections from poets. The boys in the streets call me Shakspeare. The first time they called me so I smiled at them, and was honoured by the name, though it’s only passing! it’s only fleet!

“I was born in Dublin, and my father was in the army, and my mother was a lady’s nurse and midwife, and used to go out on urgent business, but only to ladies of the higher classes. My mother died in Dublin, and my father left the army and became a turnkey in Dublin prison. Father left Dublin when I was about ten years of age, and went to Manchester. Then I went into an office—a herring-store, which had agents at Yarmouth and other fishing-ports; and there I had to do writing. Summer-time was our busiest time, for we used to have to sit up at night waiting for the trains to come in with the fish. I used to get 3d. an hour for every hour we worked over, and 6d. in the morning for coffee, and 8s. 6d. standing wages, whether I worked or played. I know all about herrings and herring-packing, for I was two years there, and the master was like a father to me, and would give me money many times, Christmas-boxes, and new-years’ gifts, and such-like. I might have been there now, and foreman by this time, in the Isle of Man, where we had a house, only I was too foolish—going to theatres and such-like.

“You see, I used, before I went out as clerk, to go to a school in Manchester, where the master taught recitation. We used to speak pieces from Uwin’s ‘Elocution,’ and we had to get a piece off to elocution, and attitude, and position; indeed, elocution may be said to be position and attitude. We used to do ‘The Downfall of Poland,’ and ‘Lord Ullen’s Daughter,’ and ‘My name is Norval,’ and several others—‘Rolla,’ and all them. Then we used to speak them one at a time, and occasionally we would take different parts, such as the ‘Quarrel of Brutus,’ and ‘Cassius,’ and ‘Rolla,’ and the ‘American Patriot,’ and such-like. I will not boast of myself, but I was one of the best in the class, though since I have gone out in the streets it has spoiled my voice and my inclinations, for the people likes shouting. I have had as many as 500 persons round me in the Walworth-road at one time, and we got 4s. between us; and then we lost several halfpence, for it was night, and we could not see the money that was thrown into the ring. We did the ‘Gipsy’s Revenge,’ and ‘Othello’s Apology.’

“Whilst I was at the herring-stores I used to be very fond of the theatre, and I’d go there every night if I could, and I did nearly manage to be there every evening. I’d save up my money, and if I’d none I’d go to my master and ask him to let me have a few halfpence; and I’ve even wanted to go to the play so much that, when I couldn’t get any money, I’d sell my clothes to go. Master used to caution me, and say that the theatre would ruin me, and I’m sure it has. When my master would tell me to stop and do the books, I’d only just run them over at night and cast them up as quickly as I could, and then I’d run out and go to the twopenny theatre on the Victoria-bridge, Manchester. Sometimes I used to perform there for Mr. Row, who was the proprietor. It was what is called a travelling ‘slang,’ a booth erected temporarily. I did William Tell’s son, and I’ve also done the ‘Bloody Child’ in Macbeth, and go on with the witches. It was a very little stage, but with very nice scenery, and shift-scenes and all, the same as any other theatre. On a Saturday night he used to have as many as six houses; start off at three o’clock, after the factory hands had been paid off. I never had any money for acting, for though he offered me half-a-sovereign a-week to come and take a part, yet I wouldn’t accept of it, for I only did it for my own amusement like. They used to call me King Dick.

“My master knew I went to the theatre to act, for he sent one of the boys to follow me, and he went in front and saw me acting in Macbeth, and he went and told master, because, just as the second act was over, he came right behind the scenes and ordered me out, and told me I’d have to get another situation if I went there any more. He took me home and finished the books, and the next morning I told him I’d leave, for I felt as if it was my sole ambition to get on to the stage, or even put my foot on it; I was so enamoured of it. And it is the same now, for I’d do anything to get engaged—it’s as if a spell was on me. Just before I left he besought me to remain with him, and said that I was a useful hand to him, and a good boy when I liked, and that he wanted to make a gentleman of me. He was so fond of me that he often gave me money himself to go to a theatre; but he said too much of it was bad.

“After I left him I went with another boy to go to sea. I forgot all about the theatre, for it agitated my feelings when I left him, and I wished I had been back, for I’d been with him eighteen months, and he’d been like a father to me; but I was too ashamed to see him again. This boy and me started for Scarborough, and he had no money, and I had 5s., that was all between us; but I had a black suit of clothes cost 2l. 10s., which my master had made me a present of, for excelling the foreman in making up the books—for the foreman was 208 hands of herrings (five herrings make a hand) short in one week; and then I took the books the next week, and I was only four herrings short, and master was so pleased that he bestowed upon me a present of a new suit of clothes.

“I parted with my companion for this reason. One day, after we had been walking, we were so hungry we could eat anything, and I had been accustomed to never being hungry, so that I was very much exhausted from fatigue, for we had walked thirty miles that day, only eating one piece of bread, which I got at a public-house where I gave a recitation. We came to a farm-house at a place called Bishop Wilton, in Yorkshire, and he went inside the door to beg for something to eat. There was a young lady came out and talked to him and gave him some bread, and then she saw me and had compassion on me, because I looked respectable and was so miserable. We told her we were cousins, and had left our fathers and mothers (for we didn’t like to say we had left our masters), and she said, ‘Poor boys! your parents will be fretting after you; I’d go back, if I was you.’ She gave him a large bit of bread, and then she gave me a big bit of cold plum-pudding. My companion wanted half my pudding besides his own bread, and I preferred to give him part of the pudding and not have any bread; but he wouldn’t, and struck out at me. I returned it, and then we fought, and an old woman came out with a stick and beat us both, and said we were incorrigible young beggars, and couldn’t be very hungry or we shouldn’t fight that way. Then I parted from my companion, and he took the direct road to Scarborough, and I went to York. I saw him afterwards when I returned to Manchester. His father left him 200l., and he’s doing very well in a good situation in a commercial office.

“I got bound for six years to sea to a shipowner at Scarborough, but the mate behaved very bad to me and used me brutally. I couldn’t use the ropes as well as he thought I might, although I learned the compass and all the ropes very soon. The captain was a very good man, but I daren’t tell him for fear of the mate. He used to beat me with the rope’s end—sometimes the lead-rope—that was his usual weapon, and he used to leave marks on me. I took the part of Hamlet, and, instead of complaining, I thought of that part where he says,

That’s the best play of Shakspeare; he outdoes himself there.

“When the brig got to Scheidam, in Holland, five miles off Rotterdam, I ran away. The vessel was a collier, and whilst they were doing the one, two, three, and pulling up the coals, I slipped over the side and got to shore. I walked to Rotterdam, and there I met an Irish sailor and told him all, and he told me to apply to the British Consul and say that I had been left ashore by a Dutch galliot, which had sailed the day before for Jersey. The Consul put me in a boarding-house—a splendid place, with servants to wait on you, where they gave me everything, cigars and all, for everybody smokes there—little boys scarce higher than the table—and cigars are only a cent each—and five cents make a penny. I was like a gentleman then, and then they put me in the screw steamer, the Irwell, and sent me back to Hull.

“When I got to Manchester again, I went in my sailor-clothes to see my old master. He was very glad to see me, and asked me if I wanted anything to eat, and sent out for ale for me, and was so glad to see me that he gave me money. He took me back again at higher wages, 10s.—which was 1s. 6d. over—and I stopped there eight months, until they wrote to me from Dublin that father was very ill, and that I was to come over directly. So I went, and was by him when he died. He was sixty-two years of age, and left 400l. to my sister, which she is to have when she comes of age. He quarrelled with me because he was a Catholic, and I didn’t follow that persuasion, and he disowned me; but, just before he died, he blessed me, and looked as if he wanted to say something to me, but he couldn’t, for the breath was leaving him.

“When I returned to Manchester I found my master had taken another servant, as he expected I should stop in Dublin, and there was no vacancy; but he recommended me to another merchant, and there I was put in the yard to work among the herrings, as he didn’t know my capabilities; but, in a short time I was put in the shop as boy, and then I was very much in favour with the master and the missus, and the son, and he used to bring me to concerts and balls, and was very partial to me; and I used to eat and drink with them at their own table. I’ve been foolish, and never a friend to myself, for I ran away from them. A lad told me that London was such a fine place, and induced me to sell my clothes and take the train; and here I’ve been for about eight months knocking about.

“As long as my money lasted I used to go to the theatre every night—to the Standard, and the City-road, and the Britannia; but when it was gone I looked then to see what I might do. At first I tried for a situation, but they wouldn’t take me, because I couldn’t get a recommendation in London. Then I formed a resolution of giving recitations from Shakspeare and the other poets in public-houses, and getting a living that way.

“I had learned a good deal of Shakspeare at school; and besides, when I was with my master I had often bought penny copies of Shakspeare, and I used to study it in the office, hiding it under the book I was writing in; and, when nobody was looking, studying the speeches. I used to go and recite before the men in the yard, and they liked it.

“The first night I went out I earned 4s., and that was a great cheer to my spirits. It was at a public-house in Fashion-street. I went into the tap-room and asked the gentlemen if they would wish to hear a recitation from Shakspeare, and they said, ‘Proceed.’ The first part I gave them was from Richard the Third: ‘Now is the winter of our discontent;’ and then they clapped me and made me do it over again. Then I performed Hamlet’s ‘Soliloquy on the Immortality of the Soul,’ and they threw down 2s. in coppers, and one gentleman gave me sixpence.

“I’ve continued giving recitations from Shakspeare and selections from the poets ever since, and done very well, until I became ill with a cold, which made my voice bad, so that I was unable to speak. I’ve been ill now a fortnight, and I went out last night for the first time, along with another young fellow who recites, and we got 1s. 6d. between us in the ‘Gipsy’s Revenge.’ We went to a public-house where they were having ‘a lead,’ that is a collection for a friend who is ill, and the company throw down what they can for a subscription, and they have in a fiddle and make it social. But it was not a good ‘lead,’ and poorly attended, so we did not make much out of the company.

“When I go out to recite, I generally go with another boy, and we take parts. The pieces that draw best with the public are, ‘The Gipsy’s Revenge,’ ‘The Gold Digger’s Revenge,’ ‘The Miser,’ ‘The Robber,’ ‘The Felon,’ and ‘The Highwayman.’ We take parts in these, and he always performs the villain, and I take the noble characters. He always dies, because he can do a splendid back-fall, and he looks so wicked when he’s got the moustaches on. I generally draws the company by giving two or three recitations, and then we perform a piece; and whilst he goes round with the hat, I recite again. My favourite recitations are, ‘Othello’s Apology,’ beginning with ‘Most potent, grave, and reverend Signiors,’ and those from Hamlet, Richard III., and Macbeth. Of the recitations I think the people prefer that from Othello, for the ladies have often asked me to give them that from Othello (they like to hear about Desdemona), but the gentlemen ask for that from Hamlet, ‘To be, or not to be?’

“My principal place for giving performances is the Commercial-road, near Limehouse, but the most theatrically inclined neighbourhood is the Walworth-road. The most money I ever took at one time in the streets was 4s. in the Walworth-road.

“The best receipts I ever had was got in a public-house near Brick-lane, for I took 12s., and I was alone. There was a ‘lead’ up there for a friend, and I knew of it, and I had my hair curled and got myself decently habited, I was there for about three or four hours, and in the intervals between the dances I used to recite. There were girls there, and they took my part, though they made me drink so much I was nearly tipsy.

“The only theatrical costume I put on is moustachios, and I take a stick to use as a sword. I put myself into attitudes, and look as fierce as I can. When first the people came to hear me they laughed, and then they became quiet; and sometimes you could hear a pin drop.

“When I am at work regularly—that’s when I am in voice and will—I make about 10s. a-week, if there’s not much rain. If it’s wet, people don’t go to the public-houses, and they are my best paying audiences. The least I have ever taken in a week is about 6s.

“There isn’t many going about London reciting. It is a very rare class to be found; I only know about four who live that way, and I have heard of the others from hearsay—not that I have seen them myself.

“I’m very fond of music, and know most of the opera. That organ’s playing something by Verdi; I heard it at the theatre at Dublin. I amuse them sometimes in the kitchen at my lodgings by playing on a penny tin whistle. I can do ‘Still, so gently,’ from ‘La Sonnambula,’ and hornpipes, and jigs, and Scotch airs, as well as ‘Cheer boys, cheer,’ and ‘To the West,’ and many others. They get me to play when they want to dance, and they pay me for them. They call me Shakspeare by name.”

An intelligent man gave me the following account of his experience as a blind reader. He was poorly dressed, but clean, and had not a vulgar look.

“My father died when I was ten years old, and my mother in the coronation year, 1838. I am now in my thirty-eighth year. I was a clerk in various offices. I was not born blind, but lost my sight four years ago, in consequence of aneurism. I was a fortnight in the Ophthalmic Hospital, and was an out-patient for three months. I am a married man, with one child, and we did as well as we could, but that was very badly, until every bit of furniture (and I had a house full of good furniture up to that time) went. At last I thought I might earn a little by reading in the street. The Society for the Indigent Blind gave me the Gospel of St. John, after Mr. Freer’s system, the price being 8s.; and a brother-in-law supplied me with the Gospel of St. Luke, which cost 9s. In Mr. Freer’s system the regular alphabet letters are not used, but there are raised characters, thirty-four in number, including long and short vowels; and these characters express sounds, and a sound may comprise a short syllable. I learned to read by this system in four lessons. I first read in public in Mornington-crescent. For the first fortnight or three weeks I took from 2s. 6d. to 2s. 9d. a-day—one day I took 3s. My receipts than fell to something less than 18d. a-day, and have been gradually falling ever since. Since the 1st of January, this year, I haven’t averaged more than 2s. 6d. a-week by my street reading and writing. My wife earns 3s. or 4s. a-week with her needle, slaving with a ‘sweater’ to a shirtmaker. I have never read anywhere but in Euston-square and Mornington-crescent. On Whit-Monday I made 2s. 0½d., and that, I assure you, I reckon real good holiday earnings; and I read until I was hoarse with it. Once I counted at Mornington-crescent, as closely as I could, just out of curiosity and to wile away the time, above 2000 persons, who passed and re-passed without giving me a halfpenny. The working people are my best friends, most decidedly. I am tired of the streets; besides, being half-starved. There are now five or six blind men about London, who read in the streets. We can read nothing but the Scriptures, as ‘blind printing,’—so it’s sometimes called—has only been used in the Scriptures. I write also in the streets, as well as read. I use Wedgwood’s manifold writer. I write verses from Scripture. There was no teaching necessary for this. I trace the letters from my knowledge of them when I could see. I believe I am the only blind man who writes in the streets.”

“I am an Italian, domiciled at Genoa, and I speak very little French, only just enough to ask for things—to get my life with, you know. Genoa is the most rich town of Piedmont, but it is not the most jolie. Oh no! no! no! Turin is the most beautiful, oh yes! It is a long street of palaces. You know Turin is where the King of Sardinia, with the long moustaches, lives. Has Monsieur been to Turin? No! Ah, it is a great sight! Perhaps Monsieur has seen Genoa? No! Ah you have a great pleasure to come. Genoa is very rich, but Turin is very beautiful. I prefer Turin.

“I was a soldier in my country. Oh, not an officer. I was in the 2nd battalion of the Bassolein, nearly the same as the Chasseurs de Vincennes in France. It is the first regiment in Piedmont. We had a green uniform with a roll collar, and a belt round one shoulder, and a short rifle. We had a feather one side of our hats, which are of felt. Ah, c’était bien joli ça! We use long bullets, Minié ones. All the army in my country are under four brothers, who are all generals, and Ferdinando Marmora is the commander-in-chief—the same that was in the Crimea. Nearly all my companions in the Bassolein regiment were from the Tyrol. Ah, they shoot well! They never miss. They always kill. Sacré Dieu!

“I was wounded at the bataille de Pescare, against the Austrians. We gained the battle and entered the town. The General Radetzky was against us. He is a good general, but Ferdinando Marmora beat him. Ferdinando was wounded by a ball in the cheek. It passed from left to right. He has the mark now. Ah, he is a good general. I was wounded. Pardon! I cannot say if it was a bal de canon or a bal de fusil. I was on the ground like one dead. I fell with my leg bent behind me, because they found me so. They tell me, that as I fell I cried, ‘My God! my God!’ but that is not in my memory. After they had finished the battle they took up the wounded. Perhaps I was on the ground twelve hours, but I do not know exactly. I was picked up with others and taken to the hospital, and then one day after my leg decomposed, and it was cut directly. All the bone was fracassé, vairy beaucoup. I was in the hospital for forty days. Ah! it was terrible. To cut the nerves was terrible. They correspond with the head. Ah, horrible! They gave me no chloroform. Rien! rien! No, nor any dormitore, as we call it in Italian, you know,—something in a glass to drink and make you sleep. Rien! rien! If I had gone into the Hôpital des Invalides, I should have had 20 sous a-day; but I would not, and now my pension is 12 sous a-day. I am paid that now; whether I am here or there, it is the same. My wife receives the 12 sous whilst I am here. I shall not stop here long. The langue is too difficult. No, I shall not learn it, because at the house where I lodge we speak Italian, and in the streets I speak to no one.

“I have been to France, but there the policemen were against me. They are bêtes, the policemen français. The gentlemen and ladies all all good. As I walked in the streets with my crutch, one would say, ‘Here, poor fellow, are two sous;’ or, ‘Come with me and have some wine.’ They are good hearts there. Whilst I was going to Paris I walk on my leg. I also even now and then find good occasions for mounting in a voiture. I say to them, ‘Monsieur, accord me the relief of a ride?’ and they say, ‘Yes, come, come.’

“In England no police interfere with me. Here it is good. If the police say to me ‘Go on, go on,’ I say, ‘Pardon, Monsieur,’ and move away. I never ask any body for money. I work in the streets, and do my gun exercise, and then I leave it to the Bon Dieu to make them give me something. I never ask.

“I have been very unfortunate. I have a tumour come under the arm where I rest on my crutch. It is a tumour, as they call it in France, but I do not know what it is named in English. I went to the hospital of San Bartolommeo and they cut it for me. Then I have hurt my stomach, from the force of calling out the differing orders of commanding, whilst I am doing my gun exercises in the streets. I was two months in my bed with my arm and my stomach being bad. Some days I cannot go out, I am so ill. I cannot drink beer, it is too hot for me, and gets to my head, and it is bad for my stomach. I eat fish: that is good for the voice and the stomach. Now I am better, and my side does not hurt me when I cry out my commanding orders. If I do it for a long time it is painful.

“Ah, pauvre diable! to stop two months in my bed, June, August! The most beautiful months. It was ruin to me.

“After I have gone out for one day, I am forced to rest for the next one. Monday I go out, because I repose on the Sunday. Then all goes well, I am strong in my voice. But I cannot travailler two days following. It is not my leg, that is strong. It is my stomach, and the pains in my side from crying out my commandements. When I go out I make about 10s. a-week. Yes, it comes to that. It is more than 1s. a-day.

“I have a cold. I go out one day when it blew from the north, and the next day I was ill. It makes more cold here than at Genoa, but at Turin in the winter it is more cold than here. It is terrible, terrible. A servant brings in a jug of water, and by-and-by it has ice on its top. I find the bourgeois and not the militaires give the most money. All the persons who have voyagé in France and Italy will give me money—not much, you know, but to me fortune, fortune! If I see a foreigner in the crowd I speak to him. I know the face of an étranger tout-de-suite. Some say to me, ‘Vous parlez Français?’ ‘Oui Monsieur.’ Others ask me, ‘You speak Italian?’ ‘Si, Signor.’ I never, when I go through my exercise, begin by addressing the people. If I told them I had been a soldier in the army of Sardinia, they would not understand me. Yes, some of the words sound the same in French and English, such as army and soldat, but I have not the heart to beg. I have been soldier, and I cannot take off my cap and beg. I work for what they give me. They give me money and I give them my exercise. I sometimes have done my exercise before a great crowd of people, and when it is done nobody will give me money, and my heart sinks within me. I stand there honteux. One will then in pity throw a sou, but I cannot pick it up, for I will not sell my pride for a penny. If they hand it to me, then I take it, and am pleased with their kindness. But I have only one leg, and to throw the penny on the ground is cruel, for I cannot bend down, and it hurts my pride to put such money in my pocket.

“The little children do not annoy me in the streets, because I never do my exercise until they are at school. Between one and two I never do my exercise, because the little children they are going to their lessons. They never mock me in the streets, for I have been unfortunate to lose my legs, and nobody will mock a miserable infortuné. The carts of the butchers and the bakers, which carry the meat and the bread, and go so fast in the streets, they frighten me when I do my exercises. They nearly écrasé the gens. Tenez! Yesterday I go to the chemin de fer de Birmingham, to the open space before the station, and then I do my exercise. All the people come to their windows and collect about to see me. I walk about like a soldier—but only on my one leg, you know, hopping—and I do my exercise with my crutch for my gun. I stand very steady on one leg. There was a coachman of a cab, and he continued to drive his horse at me, and say, ‘Go on! go on!’ There was no policeman, or he would not have dared to do it, for the policemen protect me. Le bête! I turn upon him, and cry, ‘Bête! take care, bête!’ But he still say, ‘Get on.’ The cheval come close to my back whilst I hop on my one leg to avoid him. At last I was very tired, and he cried out always, ‘Get on! get on!’ So I cried out for help, and all the ladies run out from their houses and protect me. They said, ‘Poor fellow! poor fellow!’ and all gave me a half sou. If I had had five shillings in my pocket, I would have gone to a journal and reported that bête, and had the fellow exposed; but I had not five shillings, so I could not go to a journal.

“When I do my exercise, this what I do. I first of all stand still on one leg, in the position of a militaire, with my crutch shouldered like a gun. That is how I accumulate the persons. Then I have to do all. It makes me laugh, for I have to be the general, the capitaines, the drums, the soldiers, and all. Pauvre diable! I must live. It is curious, and makes me laugh.

“I first begin my exercises by doing the drums. I beat my hands together, and make a noise like this—‘hum, hum! hum, hum, hum! hum, hum! hum, hum! hu-u-u-m!’ and then the drums go away and I do them in the distance. You see I am the drummers then. Next I become the army, and make a noise with my foot, resembling soldiers on a march, and I go from side to side to imitate an army marching. Then I become the trumpeters, but instead of doing the trumpets I whistle their music, and the sound comes nearer and nearer, and gets louder and louder, and then gradually dies away in the distance, as if a bataillon was marching in front of its general. I make a stamping with my foot, like men marching past. After that I become the officiers, the capitaines and the lieutenants, as if the general was passing before them, and my crutch becomes my sword instead of my gun. Then I draw it from my side, and present it with the handle pointed to my breast. Then I become the general, and I gives this order: ‘Separate bataillons three steps behind—un, deux, trois!’ and I instantly turn to the army again and give three hops to the side, so that the general may walk up and down before me and see how the soldiers are looking. Then I in turn become the officier who gives the commands, and the soldiers who execute them. It hurts my voice when I cry out these commands. They must be very loud, or all the army would not hear them. I can be heard a long way off when I call them out. I begin with ‘Portez AR-R-R-MES!’ that is, ‘Carry arms,’ in England. Then I lift my crutch up on my left side and hold it there. Then comes ‘Present AR-R-RMES!’ and then I hold the gun—my crutch, you know—in front of me, straight up. The next is, ‘Repose AR-R-RMES!’ and I put to my hip, with the barrel leaning forwards. When I say, barrel, it’s only my crutch, you understand. Then I shout, ‘Un, deux, trois! Ground AR-R-RMS!’ and let the top of my crutch slide on to the road, and I stamp with my toes to resemble the noise. Afterwards I give the command, ‘Portez AR-R-RMES!’ and then I carry my arms again in my left hand, and slap my other hand hard down by my right side, like a veritable soldier, and stand upright in position. Whilst I am so I shout, ‘Separate the COLUMNS! Un, deux, TR-R-ROIS!’ and instantly I hop on my one leg three times backwards, so as to let the general once more walk down the ranks and inspect the men. As soon as he is supposed to be near to me, I shout ‘Présent AR-R-RMES!’ and then I hold my gun—the crutch, you comprehend—in front of me. Then, as soon as the general is supposed to have passed, I shout out, ‘Repose AR-R-RMES!’ and I let the crutch slant from the right hip, waiting until I cry again ‘Ground AR-R-R-RMS! un, deux, TR-R-ROIS!’ and then down slides the crutch to the ground.

“Next I do the other part of the review. I do the firing now, only, you comprehend, I don’t fire, but only imitate it with my crutch. I call out ‘Ground AR-R-RMS!’ and let the top of my crutch fall to the earth. After that I shout, ‘Load AR-R-RMS! un, deux, TR-R-ROIS!’ and I pretend to take a cartouche from my side, and bite off the end, and slip it down the barrel of my crutch. Next I give the command, ‘Draw RAMRODS! un, deux, TR-R-ROIS!’ and then I begin to ram the cartridge home to the breech of the barrel. Afterwards I give the command, ‘Cock AR-R-RMS!’ and then I pretend to take a percussion cap from my side-pocket, and I place it on the nipple and draw back the hammer. Afterwards I shout, ‘Point AR-R-RMS!’ and I pretend to take aim. Next I shout, ‘Recover AR-R-RMS!’ that is, to hold the gun up in the air, and not to fire. Then I give orders, such as ‘Point to the LEFT,’ or ‘Point to the right,’ and whichever way it is, I have to twist myself round on my one leg, and take an aim that way. Then I give myself the order to ‘FIRE!’ and I imitate it by a loud shout, and then rattling my tongue as if the whole line was firing. As quickly as I can call out I shout, ‘Recover AR-R-RMS!’ and I put up my gun before me to resist with my bayonet any charge that may be made. Then I shout out, ‘Draw up the ranks and receive the CAVALRY!’ and then I work myself along on my one foot, but not by hopping; and there I am waiting for the enemy’s horse, and ready to receive them. Often, after I have fired, I call out ‘CHAR-R-RGE!’ and then I hop forwards as fast as I can, as if I was rushing down upon the enemy, like this. Ah! I was nearly charging through your window; I only stopped in time, or I should have broken the squares in reality. Such a victory would have cost me too dear. After I have charged the enemy and put them to flight, then I draw myself up again, and give the order to ‘Form COLUMNS!’ And next I ‘Carry AR-R-RMS,’ and then ‘Present AR-R-RMS,’ and finish by ‘GROUNDING AR-R-RMS, un, deux, TR-R-ROIS.’

“Oh, I have forgotten one part. I do it after the charging. When I have returned from putting the enemy to flight, I become the general calling his troops together. I shout, ‘AR-R-RMS on the SHOULDER!’ and then I become the soldier, and let my gun rest on my shoulder, the same as when I am marching. Then I shout, ‘MARCH!’ and I hop round on my poor leg, for I cannot march, you comprehend, and I suppose myself to be defiling before the general. Next comes the order ‘Halt!’ and I stop still.

“It does not fatigue me to hop about on one leg. It is strong as iron. It is never fatigued. I have walked miles on it with my crutch. It only hurts my chest to holloa out the commands, for if I do not do it with all my force it is not heard far off. Besides, I am supposed to be ordering an army, and you must shout out to be heard by all the men; and although I am the only one, to be sure, still I wish to make the audience believe I am an army.

“One day I was up where there is the Palace of the Regina, by the park, with the trees—a very pretty spot, with a park corner, you know. I was there, and I go by a street where the man marks the omnibus which pass, and I go down a short street, and I come to a large place where I do my exercises. A gentleman say to me, ‘Come, my friend,’ and I go into his house, and he give me some bread, and some meat, and some beer, and a shilling, and I do my exercises for him. That is the only house where I was called to perform inside. He spoke Italian, and French, and English, so that I not know which country he belongs to. Another day I was doing my exercises and some little children called to their mamma, ‘Oh, look! look! come here! the soldier! the soldier!’ and the dame said to me, ‘Come here and perform to my little boys;’ and she gave me sixpence. Those are my fortunes, for to-day I may take two or three shillings, and to-morrow nothing but a few miserable sous; or perhaps I am ill in my stomach with shouting, and I cannot come out to work for my living.

“When it is cold it makes the end of my leg, where it’s cut off, begin to tremble, and then it almost shakes me with its shivering, and I am forced to go home, for it is painful.

“I have been about fourteen months. They wanted 4s. to bring me from Boulogne to London; but I had no money, so at the bureau office they gave me a ticket for nothing. Then I came straight to London. When I came to London I couldn’t speak English, and I knew no one; had no money, and didn’t know where to lodge. That is hard—bien dur. I bought some bread and eat it, and then in the evening I met an Italian, who plays on the organ, you know; and he said, ‘Come with me;’ and he took me to his lodgings, and there I found Italians and Frenchmen, and I was happy. I began to work the next day at my exercises.

“One day I was in the quarter of the palaces, by the park, you know, and I began my exercises. I could not speak English, and a policeman came to me and said, ‘Go on!’ What’s that? I thought. He said, ‘Go on!’ again, and I couldn’t comprehend, and asked him, ‘Parlate Italiano?’ and he kept on saying, ‘Go on!’ This is drôle, I thought; so I said, ‘Vous parlez Français?’ and he still said, ‘Go on!’ What he meant I couldn’t make out, for I didn’t know English, and I had only been here a week. I thought he wanted to see my exercises, so I began, ‘Portez ar-r-r-mes!’ and he still said, ‘Go on!’ Then I laughed, and made some signs to follow him. Oh, I thought, it is some one else who wants to see my exercises; and I followed him, enchanted with my good fortune. But, alas! he took me to a police office. There I had an interpreter, and I was told I must not do my exercises in the street. When I told them I was a soldier in the army of the ally of England, and that I had been wounded in battle, and lost my leg fighting for my country, they let me go; and since the policemen are very kind to me, and always say, ‘Go on,’ with much politeness. I told the magistrate in Italian, ‘How can England, so rich and so powerful, object to a pauvre diable like me earning a sou, by showing the exercises of the army of its ally?’ The magistrate laughed, and so did the people, and I said, ‘Good day,’ and made my reverence and left. I have never been in a prison. Oh, no! no! no! no! no! What harm could I do? I have not the power to be a criminal, and I have the heart to be an honest man, and live by my exercises.

“I have travelled in the country. I went to Cheltenham and Bristol. I walked very little of the way. I did my exercises at one place, and then I got enough to go to another town. Ah, it is beautiful country out there. I went to Bristol. I made 7s. in two days there. But I don’t like the country. It does not suit me. I prefer London.

“I one day did my exercises by—what do you call it? where the people go up—high, high—no, not St. Paul’s—no, by a bridge, where there is an open space. Yes, the monument of Nelson; and then, O! what a crowd! To the right and the left, and to the front and behind, an immense crowd to see my exercises. I made a good deal of money that day. A great deal. The most that I ever did.

“I make about 8s. a-week regularly; I make more than that some weeks, but I often don’t go out for a week, because in the rain nobody will come to see my exercises. Some weeks I make 15s., but others not 5s. But I must make 8s. to be able to pay for lodgings, and food, and washing, and clothes, and for my shoe; for I only want one. I give 3d. a-day for my lodgings; but then we have a kitchen, and a fire in it, where we go and sit. There are a great many paysans there, a great many boys, where I lodge, and that gives me pain to see them; for they have been brought over from their country, and here they are miserable, and cannot speak a word of English, and are made to work for their master, who takes the money. Oh! it’s make me much pain.

“I cannot say if there are any others who do their exercises in the streets; but I have never seen any. I am, I think, the only stranger who does his exercises. It was my own idea. I did it in France whilst I was travelling; but it was only once or twice, for it was défendu to do it; and the policemen are very severe. Ils sont bêtes, les policemen en France. The gentlemens and ladies very good heart, and give a poor diable des sous, or offer wine to pauvre diable qui a perdu sa jambe en combattant pour sa patrie; mais les policemen sont bêtes. Ah, bêtes! so bêtes I can’t tell you.”

II.—STREET MUSICIANS. — “ Old Sarah. ” — “Farm-yard” Player. — Blind Performer on the Bells. — Blind Female Violin Player. — Blind Scotch Violoncello Player. — Blind Irish Piper. — The English Street Bands. — The German Street Bands. — Of the Bagpipe Players. — Scotch Piper and Dancing-Girl. — Another Bagpipe Player. — French Hurdy-gurdy Player, with Dancing Children. — Poor Harp Player. — Organ Man, with Flute Harmonicon Organ. — Italian Pipers and Clarionet Players. — Italian with Monkey. — The Dancing Dogs. — Concertina Player on the Steamboats. — Tom-tom Players. — Another “Tom-Tom” Player. — Performer on Drum and Pipes.

Concerning street musicians, they are of multifarious classes. As a general rule, they may almost be divided into the tolerable and the intolerable performers, some of them trusting to their skill in music for the reward for their exertions, others only making a noise, so that whatever money they obtain is given them merely as an inducement for them to depart. The well-known engraving by Hogarth, of “the enraged musician,” is an illustration of the persecutions inflicted in olden times by this class of street performers; and in the illustrations by modern caricaturists we have had numerous proofs, that up to the present time the nuisance has not abated. Indeed, many of these people carry with them musical instruments, merely as a means of avoiding the officers of the Mendicity Society, or in some few cases as a signal of their coming to the persons in the neighbourhood, who are in the habit of giving them a small weekly pension.

These are a more numerous class than any other of the street performers I have yet dealt with. The musicians are estimated at 1000, and the ballad singers at 250.

The street musicians are of two kinds, the skilful and the blind. The former obtain their money by the agreeableness of their performance, and the latter, in pity for their affliction rather than admiration of their harmony. The blind street musicians, it must be confessed, belong generally to the rudest class of performers. Music is not used by them as a means of pleasing, but rather as a mode of soliciting attention. Such individuals are known in the “profession” by the name of “pensioners;” they have their regular rounds to make, and particular houses at which to call on certain days of the week, and from which they generally obtain a “small trifle.” They form, however, a most peculiar class of individuals. They are mostly well-known characters, and many of them have been performing in the streets of London for many years. They are also remarkable for the religious cast of their thoughts, and the comparative refinement of their tastes and feelings.

One of the most deserving and peculiar of the street musicians was an old lady who played upon a hurdy-gurdy. She had been about the streets of London for upwards of forty years, and being blind, had had during that period four guides, and worn out three instruments. Her cheerfulness, considering her privation and precarious mode of life, was extraordinary. Her love of truth, and the extreme simplicity of her nature, were almost childlike. Like the generality of blind people, she had a deep sense of religion, and her charity for a woman in her station of life was something marvellous; for, though living on alms, she herself had, I was told, two or three little pensioners. When questioned on this subject, she laughed the matter off as a jest, though I was assured of the truth of the fact. Her attention to her guide was most marked. If a cup of tea was given to her after her day’s rounds, she would be sure to turn to the poor creature who led her about, and ask, “You comfortable, Liza?” or “Is your tea to your liking, Liza?”

When conveyed to Mr. Beard’s establishment to have her daguerreotype taken, she for the first time in her life rode in a cab; and then her fear at being pulled “back’ards” as she termed it (for she sat with her back to the horse), was almost painful. She felt about for something to lay hold of, and did not appear comfortable until she had a firm grasp of the pocket. After her alarm had in a measure subsided, she turned to her guide and said, “We must put up with those trials, Liza.” In a short time, however, she began to find the ride pleasant enough. “Very nice, ain’t it Liza?” she said; “but I shouldn’t like to ride on them steamboats, they say they’re shocking dangerous; and as for them railways, I’ve heard tell they’re dreadful; but these cabs, Liza, is very nice.” On the road she was continually asking “Liza” where they were, and wondering at the rapidity at which they travelled. “Ah!” she said, laughing, “if I had one of these here cabs, my ‘rounds’ would soon be over.” Whilst ascending the high flight of stairs that led to the portrait-rooms, she laughed at every proposal made to her to rest. “There’s twice as many stairs as these to our church, ain’t there, Liza?” she replied when pressed. When the portrait was finished she expressed a wish to feel it.

The following is the history of her life, as she herself related it, answering to the variety of questions put to her on the subject:—

“I was born the 4th April, 1786 (it was Good Friday that year), at a small chandler’s shop, facing the White Horse, Stuart’s-rents, Drury-lane. Father was a hatter, and mother an artificial-flower maker and feather finisher. When I was but a day old, the nurse took me out of the warm bed and carried me to the window, to show some people how like I was to father. The cold flew to my eyes and I caught inflammation in them. Owing to mother being forced to be from home all day at her work, I was put out to dry-nurse when I was three weeks old. My eyes were then very bad, by all accounts, and some neighbours told the woman I was with, that Turner’s cerate would do them good. She got some and put it on my eyes, and when poor mother came to suckle me at her dinner-hour, my eyes was all ‘a gore of blood.’ From that time I never see afterwards. She did it, poor woman, for the best; it was no fault of her’n, and I’m sure I bears her no malice for it. I stayed at home with mother until I was thirteen, when I was put to the Blind-school, but I only kept there nine months; they turned me out because I was not clever with my hands, and I could not learn to spin or make sash-lines; my hands was ocker’d like. I had not been used at home to do anything for myself—not even to dress myself. Mother was always out at her work, so she could not learn me, and no one else would, so that’s how it was I was turned out. I then went back to my mother, and kept with her till her death. I well remember that; I heard her last. When she died I was just sixteen year old. I was sent to the Union—‘Pancridge’ Union it was—and father with me (for he was ill at the time). He died too, and left me, in seven weeks after mother. When they was both gone, I felt I had lost my only friends, and that I was all alone in the world and blind. But, take it altogether, the world has been very good to me, and I have much to thank God for and the good woman I am with. I missed mother the most, she was so kind to me; there was no one like her; no, not even father. I was kept in the Union until I was twenty; the parish paid for my learning the ‘cymbal:’ God bless them for it, I say. A poor woman in the workhouse first asked me to learn music; she said it would always be a bit of bread for me; I did as she told me, and I thank her to this day for it. It took me just five months to learn the—cymbal, if you please—the hurdy-gurdy ain’t it’s right name. The first tune I ever played was ‘God save the King,’ the Queen as is now; then ‘Harlequin Hamlet,’ that took me a long time to get off; it was three weeks before they put me on a new one. I then learnt ‘Moll Brook;’ then I did the ‘Turnpike-gate’ and ‘Patrick’s day in the morning:’ all of them I learnt in the Union. I got a poor man to teach me the ‘New-rigged ship.’ I soon learnt it, because it was an easy tune. Two-and-forty years ago I played ‘The Gal I left behind me.’ A woman learnt it me; she played my cymbal and I listened, and so got it. ‘Oh, Susannah!’ I learnt myself by hearing it on the horgan. I always try and listen to a new tune when I am in the street, and get it off if I can: it’s my bread. I waited to hear one to-day, quite a new one, but I didn’t like it, so I went on. ‘Hasten to the Wedding’ is my favourite; I played it years ago, and play it still. I like ‘Where have you been all the night?’ it’s a Scotch tune. The woman as persuaded me to learn the cymbal took me out of the Union with her; I lived with her, and she led me about the streets. When she died I took her daughter for my guide. She walked with me for more than five-and-twenty year, and she might have been with me to this day, but she took to drinking and killed herself with it. She behaved very bad to me at last, for as soon as we got a few halfpence she used to go into the public and spend it all; and many a time I’m sure she’s been too tipsy to take me home. One night I remember she rolled into the road at Kensington, and as near pulled me with her. We was both locked up in the station-house, for she couldn’t stand for liquor, and I was obligated to wait till she could lead me home. It was very cruel of her to treat me so, but, poor creature, she’s gone, and I forgive her I’m sure. I’d many guides arter her, but none of them was honest like Liza is: I don’t think she’d rob me of a farden. Would you, Liza? Yes, I’ve my reg’lar rounds, and I’ve kept to ’em for near upon fifty year. All the children like to hear me coming along, for I always plays my cymbal as I goes. At Kentish-town they calls me Mrs. Tuesday, and at Kensington I’m Mrs. Friday, and so on. At some places they likes polkas, but at one house I plays at in Kensington they always ask me for ‘Haste to the Wedding.’ No, the cymbal isn’t very hard to play; the only thing is, you must be very particular that the works is covered up, or the halfpence is apt to drop in. King David, they say, played on one of those here instruments. We’re very tired by night-time; ain’t we, Liza? but when I gets home the good woman I lodges with has always a bit of something for me to eat with my cup of tea. She’s a good soul, and keeps me tidy and clean. I helps her all I can; when I come in, I carries her a pail of water up-stairs, and such-like. Many ladies as has known me since they was children allows me a trifle. One maiden lady near Brunswick-square has given me sixpence a week for many a year, and another allows me eighteenpence a fortnight; so that, one way and another, I am very comfortable, and I’ve much to be thankful for.”

It was during one of old Sarah’s journeys that an accident occurred, which ultimately deprived London of the well-known old hurdy-gurdy woman. In crossing Seymour-street, she and her guide Liza were knocked down by a cab, as it suddenly turned a corner. They were picked up and placed in the vehicle (the poor guide dead, and Sarah with her limbs broken), and carried to the University Hospital. Old Sarah’s description of that ride is more terrible and tragic than I can hope to make out to you. The poor blind creature was ignorant of the fate of her guide, she afterwards told us, and kept begging and praying to Liza to speak to her as the vehicle conveyed them to the asylum. She shook her, she said, and intreated her to say if she was hurt, but not a word was spoken in answer, and then she felt how terrible a privation was her blindness; and it was not until they reached the hospital, and they were lifted from the cab, that she knew, as she heard the people whisper to one another, that her faithful attendant was dead. In telling us this, the good old soul forgot her own sufferings for the time, as she lay with both her legs broken beneath the hooped bed-clothes of the hospital bed; and when, after many long weeks, she left the medical asylum, she was unable to continue her playing on the hurdy-gurdy, her hand being now needed for the crutch that was requisite to bear her on her rounds.

“OLD SARAH,” THE WELL-KNOWN HURDY-GURDY PLAYER.

[From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]

The shock, however, had been too much for the poor old creature’s feeble nature to rally against, and though she continued to hobble round to the houses of the kind people who had for years allowed her a few pence per week, and went limping along musicless through the streets for some months after she left the hospital, yet her little remaining strength at length failed her, and she took to her bed in a room in Bell-court, Gray’s-inn-lane, never to rise from it again.

A quiet-looking man, half-blind, and wrapped in a large, old, faded black-cotton great-coat, made the following statement, having first given me some specimens of his art:—

“I imitate all the animals of the farm-yard on my fiddle: I imitate the bull, the calf, the dog, the cock, the hen when she’s laid an egg, the peacock, and the ass. I have done this in the streets for nearly twelve years. I was brought up as a musician at my own desire. When a young man (I am now 53) I used to go out to play at parties, doing middling until my sight failed me; I then did the farm-yard on the fiddle for a living. Though I had never heard of such a thing before, by constant practice I made myself perfect. I studied from nature, I never was in a farm-yard in my life, but I went and listened to the poultry, anywhere in town that I could meet with them, and I then imitated them on my instrument. The Smithfield cattle gave me the study for the bull and the calf. My peacock I got at the Belvidere-gardens in Islington. The ass is common, and so is the dog; and them I studied anywhere. It took me a month, not more, if so much, to acquire what I thought a sufficient skill in my undertaking, and then I started it in the streets. It was liked the very first time I tried it. I never say what animal I am going to give; I leave that to the judgment of the listeners. They could always tell what it was. I could make 12s. a-week the year through. I play it in public-houses as well as in the streets. My pitches are all over London, and I don’t know that one is better than another. Working-people are my best friends. Thursday and Friday are my worst days; Monday and Saturday my best, when I reckon 2s. 6d. a handsome taking. I am the only man who does the farm-yard.”

A hale-looking blind man, with a cheerful look, poorly but not squalidly dressed, gave me the subjoined narrative. He was led by a strong, healthy-looking lad of 15, his stepson:—

“I have been blind since within a month of my birth,” he said, “and have been 23 years a street performer. My parents were poor, but they managed to have me taught music. I am 55 years old. I was one of a street-band in my youth, and could make my 15s. a-week at it. I didn’t like the band, for if you are steady yourself you can’t get others to be steady, and so no good can be done. I next started a piano in the streets; that was 23 years ago. I bought a chaise big enough for an invalid, and having had the body removed, my piano was fitted on the springs and the axle-tree. I carried a seat, and could play the instrument either sitting or standing, and so I travelled through London with it. It did pretty well; in the summer I took never less than 20s., and I have taken 40s. on rare occasions, in a week; but the small takings in the winter would reduce my yearly average to 15s. a-week at the utmost. I played the piano, more or less, until within these three or four years. I started the bells that I play now, as near as I can recollect, some 18 years ago. When I first played them, I had my 14 bells arranged on a rail, and tapped them with my two leather hammers held in my hands in the usual way. I thought next I could introduce some novelty into the performance. The novelty I speak of was to play the violin with the bells. I had hammers fixed on a rail, so as each bell had its particular hammer; these hammers were connected with cords to a pedal acting with a spring to bring itself up, and so, by playing the pedal with my feet, I had full command of the bells, and made them accompany the violin, so that I could give any tune almost with the power of a band. It was always my delight in my leisure moments, and is a good deal so still, to study improvements such as I have described. The bells and violin together brought me in about the same as the piano. I played the violoncello with my feet also, on a plan of my own, and the violin in my hand. I had the violoncello on a frame on the ground, so arranged that I could move the bow with my foot in harmony with the violin in my hand. The last thing I have introduced is the playing four accordions with my feet. The accordions are fixed in a frame, and I make them accompany the violin. Of all my plans, the piano, and the bells and violin, did the best, and are the best still for a standard. I can only average 12s. a-week, take the year through, which is very little for two.”

I had the following narrative from a stout blind woman, with a very grave and even meditative look, fifty-six years old, dressed in a clean cotton gown, the pattern of which was almost washed out. She was led by a very fine dog (a Scotch colley, she described it), a chain being affixed to the dog’s leather collar. A boy, poor and destitute, she said, barefooted, and wearing a greasy ragged jacket, with his bare skin showing through the many rents, accompanied her when I saw her. The boy had been with her a month, she supporting him. She said:—

“I have been blind twelve years. I was a servant in my youth, and in 1824 married a journeyman cabinet-maker. I went blind from an inflammation two years before my husband died. We had five children, all dead now—the last died six years ago; and at my husband’s death I was left almost destitute. I used to sell a few laces in the street, but couldn’t clear 2s. 6d. a-week by it. I had a little help from the parish, but very rarely; and at last I could get nothing but an order for the house. A neighbour—a tradesman—then taught me at his leisure to play the violin, but I’m not a great performer. I wish I was. I began to play in the streets five years ago. I get halfpennies in charity, not for my music. Some days I pick up 2s., some days only 6d., and on wet days nothing. I’ve often had to pledge my fiddle for 2s.—I could never get more on it, and sometimes not that. When my fiddle was in pledge, I used to sell matches and laces in the streets, and have had to borrow 1½d. to lay in a stock. I’ve sometimes taken 4d. in eight hours. My chief places, when I’ve only the dog to lead me, are Regent-street and Portland-place; and, really, people are very kind and careful in guiding and directing me,—even the cabmen! may God bless them!”

A stout, hale-looking blind man, dressed very decently in coloured clothes, and scrupulously clean, gave me the following details:—

“I am one of the three blind Scotchmen who go about the streets in company, playing the violoncello, clarionet, and flute. We are really Highlanders, and can all speak Gaelic; but a good many London Highlanders are Irish. I have been thirty years in the streets of London; one of my mates has been forty years,—he’s sixty-nine;—the other has been thirty years. I became partially blind, through an inflammation, when I was fourteen, and was stone-blind when I was twenty-two. Before I was totally blind I came to London, travelling up with the help of my bagpipes, guided by a little boy. I settled in London, finding it a big place, where a man could do well at that time, and I took a turn every now and then into the country. I could make 14s. a-week, winter and summer through, thirty years ago, by playing in the streets; now I can’t make 6s. a-week, take winter and summer. I met my two mates, who are both blind men,—both came to England for the same reason as I did,—in my journeyings in London; and at last we agreed to go together,—that’s twenty years ago. We’ve been together, on and off, ever since. Sometimes, one of us will take a turn around the coast of Kent, and another round the coast of Devon; and then join again in London, or meet by accident. We have always agreed very well, and never fought. We,—I mean the street-blind,—tried to maintain a burying and sick-club of our own; but we were always too poor. We live in rooms. I don’t know one blind musician who lives in a lodging-house. I myself know a dozen blind men, now performing in the streets of London; these are not all exactly blind, but about as bad; the most are stone-blind. The blind musicians are chiefly married men. I don’t know one who lives with a woman unmarried. The loss of sight changes a man. He doesn’t think of women, and women don’t think of him. We are of a religious turn, too, generally. I am a Roman Catholic; but the other Scotch blind men here are Presbyterians. The Scotch in London are our good friends, because they give us a little sum altogether, perhaps; but the English working-people are our main support: it is by them we live, and I always found them kind and liberal,—the most liberal in the world as I know. Through Marylebone is our best round, and Saturday night our best time. We play all three together. ‘Johnny Cope’ is our best-liked tune. I think the blind Scotchmen don’t come to play in London now. I can remember many blind Scotch musicians, or pipers, in London: they are all dead now! The trade’s dead too,—it is so! When we thought of forming the blind club, there was never more than a dozen members. These were two basket-makers, one mat-maker, four violin-players, myself, and my two mates; which was the number when it dropped for want of funds; that’s now fifteen years ago. We were to pay 1s. a-month; and sick members were to have 5s. a-week, when they’d paid two years. Our other rules were the same as other clubs, I believe. The blind musicians now in London are we three; C——, a Jew, who plays the violin; R——, an Englishman, who plays the violin elegantly; W——, a harp player; T——, violin again; H——, violin (but he plays more in public-houses); R——, the flute; M——, bagpipes; C——, bagpipes; K——, violin: that’s all I know myself. There’s a good many blind who play at the sailors’ dances, Wapping and Deptford way. We seldom hire children to lead us in the streets; we have plenty of our own, generally—I have five! Our wives are generally women who have their eyesight; but some blind men,—I know one couple,—marry blind women.”

Of the Irish Pipers, a well-dressed, middle-aged man, of good appearance, wearing large green spectacles, led by a young girl, his daughter, gave me the following account:—

“I was eleven years old when I lost my sight from cold, and I was brought up to the musical profession, and practised it several years in Ireland, of which country I am a native. I was a man of private property,—small property—and only played occasionally at the gentle-people’s places; and then more as a guest—yes, more indeed than professionally. In 1838 I married, and began to give concerts regularly; I was the performer, and played only on the union pipes at my concerts. I’m acknowledged to be the best performer in the world, even by my own craft,—excuse what seems self-praise. The union pipes are the old Irish pipes improved. In former times there was no chromatic scale; now we have eight keys to the chanter, which produce the chromatic scale as on the flute, and so the pipes are improved in the melody, and more particularly in the harmony. We have had fine performers of old. I may mention Caroll O’Daly, who flourished in the 15th century, and was the composer of the air that the Scotch want to steal from us, ‘Robin Adair,’ which is ‘Alleen ma ruen,’ or ‘Ellen, my dear.’ My concerts in Ireland answered very well indeed, but the famine reduced me so much that I was fain to get to England with my family, wife and four children; and in this visit I have been disappointed, completely so. Now I’m reduced to play in the streets, and make very little by it. I may average 15s. in the week in summer, and not half that in winter. There are many of my countrymen now in England playing the pipes, but I don’t know one respectable enough to associate with; so I keep to myself, and so I cannot tell how many there are.”

Concerning these, a respectable man gave me the following details:—

“I was brought up to the musical profession, and have been a street-performer 22 years, and I’m now only 26. I sang and played the guitar in the streets with my mother when I was four years old. We were greatly patronised by the nobility at that time. It was a good business when I was a child. A younger brother and I would go out into the streets for a few hours of an evening, from five to eight, and make 7s. or 8s. the two of us. Ours was, and is, the highest class of street music. For the last ten years I have been a member of a street band. Our band is now four in number. I have been in bands of eight, and in some composed of as many as 25; but a small band answers best for regularity. With eight in the band it’s not easy to get 3s. a-piece on a fine day, and play all day, too. I consider that there are 1000 musicians now performing in the streets of London; and as very few play singly, 1000 performers, not reckoning persons who play with niggers or such-like, will give not quite 250 street bands. Four in number is a fair average for a street band; but I think the greater number of bands have more than four in them. All the better sort of these bands play at concerts, balls, parties, processions, and water excursions, as well as in the streets. The class of men in the street bands is, very generally, those who can’t read music, but play by ear; and their being unable to read music prevents their obtaining employment in theatres, or places where a musical education is necessary; and yet numbers of street musicians (playing by ear) are better instrumentalists than many educated musicians in the theatres. I only know a few who have left other businesses to become musicians. The great majority—19-20ths of us, I should say—have been brought regularly up to be street-performers. Children now are taught very early, and seldom leave the profession for any other business. Every year the street musicians increase. The better sort are, I think, prudent men, and struggle hard for a decent living. All the street-performers of wind instruments are short-lived. Wind performers drink more, too, than the others. They must have their mouths wet, and they need some stimulant or restorative after blowing an hour in the streets. There are now twice as many wind as stringed instruments played in the streets; fifteen or sixteen years ago there used to be more stringed instruments. Within that time new wind instruments have been used in the streets. Cornopeans, or cornet-à-pistons, came into vogue about fourteen years ago; opheicleides about ten years ago (I’m speaking of the streets); and saxhorns about two years since. The cornopean has now quite superseded the bugle. The worst part of the street performers, in point of character, are those who play before or in public-houses. They drink a great deal, but I never heard of them being charged with dishonesty. In fact, I believe there’s no honester set of men breathing than street musicians. The better class of musicians are nearly all married men, and they generally dislike to teach their wives music; indeed, in my band, and in similar bands, we wouldn’t employ a man who was teaching his wife music, that she might play in the streets, and so be exposed to every insult and every temptation, if she’s young and pretty. Many of the musicians’ wives have to work very hard with their needles for the slop-shops, and earn very little in such employ; 3s. a-week is reckoned good earnings, but it all helps. The German bands injure our trade much. They’ll play for half what we ask. They are very mean, feed dirtily, and the best band of them, whom I met at Dover, I know slept three in a bed in a common lodging-house, one of the very lowest. They now block us out of all the country places to which we used to go in the summer. The German bands have now possession of the whole coast of Kent and Sussex, and wherever there are watering-places. I don’t know anything about their morals, excepting that they don’t drink. An English street-performer in a good and respectable band will now average 25s. a-week the year through. Fifteen years ago he could have made 3l. a-week. Inferior performers make from 12s. to 15s. a-week. I consider Regent-street and such places our best pitches. Our principal patrons in the parties’ line are tradesmen and professional men, such as attorneys: 10s. a-night is our regular charge.”

Next come the German Bands. I had the following statement from a young flaxen-haired and fresh-coloured German, who spoke English very fairly:—

“I am German, and have been six year in zis country. I was nearly fourteen when I come. I come from Oberfeld, eighteen miles from Hanover. I come because I would like to see how it was here. I heard zat London was a goot place for foreign music. London is as goot a place as I expect to find him. There was other six come over with me, boys and men. We come to Hull, and play in ze country about half a year; we do middling. And zen we come to London. I didn’t make money at first when I come, I had much to learn; but ze band, oh! it did well. We was seven. I play ze clarionet, and so did two others; two play French horns, one ze trambone, and one ze saxhorn. Sometime we make 7s. or 8s. a-piece in a-day now, but the business is not so goot. I reckon 6s. a-day is goot now. We never play at fairs, nor for caravans. We play at private parties or public ball-rooms, and are paid so much a dance—sixpence a dance for ze seven of us. If zare is many dances, it is goot; if not, it is bad. We play sheaper zan ze English, and we don’t spent so much. Ze English players insult us, but we don’t care about that. Zey abuse us for playing sheap. I don’t know what zair terms for dances are. I have saved money in zis country, but very little of it. I want to save enough to take me back to Hanover. We all live togeder, ze seven of us. We have three rooms to sleep in, and one to eat in. We are all single men, but one; and his wife, a German woman, lives wis us, and cooks for us. She and her husband have a bedroom to themselves. Anysing does for us to eat. We all join in housekeeping and lodging, and pay alike. Our lodging costs 2s. a-week each, our board costs us about 15s. a-week each; sometime rather less. But zat include beer; and ze London beer is very goot, and sometime we drink a goot deal of it. We drink very little gin, but we live very well, and have goot meals every day. We play in ze streets, and I zink most places are alike to us. Ladies and gentlemen are our best friends; ze working people give us very little. We play opera tunes chiefly. We don’t associate with any Englishmen. Zare are three public-houses kept by Germans, where we Germans meet. Sugar-bakers and other trades are of ze number. There are now five German brass-bands, with thirty-seven performers in zem, reckoning our own, in London. Our band lives near Whitechapel. I sink zare is one or two more German bands in ze country. I sink my countrymen, some of them, save money; but I have not saved much yet.”

A well-looking young man, dressed in full Highland costume, with modest manners and of slow speech, as if translating his words from the Gaelic before he uttered them, gave me these details:—

“I am a native of Inverness, and a Grant. My father was a soldier, and a player in the 42nd. In my youth I was shepherd in the hills, until my father was unable to support me any longer. He had 9d. a-day pension for seventeen years’ service, and had been thrice wounded. He taught me and my brither the pipes; he was too poor to have us taught any trade, so we started on our own accounts. We travelled up to London, had only our pipes to depend upon. We came in full Highland dress. The tartan is cheap there, and we mak it up oursels. My dress as I sit here, without my pipes, would cost about 4l. in London. Our mithers spin the tartan in Inverness-shire, and the dress comes to maybe 30s., and is better than the London. My pipes cost me three guineas new. It’s between five and six years since I first came to London, and I was twenty-four last November. When I started, I thought of making a fortune in London; there was such great talk of it in Inverness-shire, as a fine place with plenty of money; but when I came I found the difference. I was rather a novelty at first, and did pretty well. I could make 1l. a-week then, but now I can’t make 2s. a-day, not even in summer. There are so many Irishmen going about London, and dressed as Scotch Highlanders, that I really think I could do better as a piper even in Scotland. A Scotch family will sometimes give me a shilling or two when they find out I am a Scotchman. Chelsea is my best place, where there are many Scotchmen. There are now only five real Scotch Highlanders playing the bagpipes in the streets of London, and seven or eight Irishmen that I know of. The Irishmen do better than I do, because they have more face. We have our own rooms. I pay 4s. a-week for an empty room, and have my ain furniture. We are all married men, and have no connexion with any other street musicians. ‘Tullochgorum,’ ‘Moneymusk,’ ‘The Campbells are comin’,’ and ‘Lord Macdonald’s Reel,’ are among the performances best liked in London. I’m very seldom insulted in the streets, and then mostly by being called an Irishman, which I don’t like; but I pass it off just as well as I can.”

“I was full corporal in the 93rd Southern Highlanders, and I can get the best of characters from my commanding officers. If I couldn’t get a good character I wouldn’t be orderly to the colonel; and wherever he and the lady went, I was sure to be with them. Although I used to wear the colonel’s livery, yet I had the full corporal’s stripes on my coat. I was first orderly to Colonel Sparkes of the 93rd. He belonged to Dublin, and he was the best colonel that ever belonged to a regiment. After he died I was orderly to Colonel Aynsley. This shows I must have been a good man, and have a good character. Colonel Aynsley was a good friend to me, and he always gave me my clothes, like his other private servants. The orderly’s post is a good one, and much sought after, for it exempts you from regimental duty. Colonel Aynsley was a severe man on duty, but he was a good colonel after all. If he wasn’t to be a severe man he wouldn’t be able to discharge the post he had to discharge. Off duty he was as kind as anybody could be. There was no man he hated more than a dirty soldier. He wouldn’t muddle a man for being drunk, not a quarter so much as for dirty clothing. I was reckoned the cleanest soldier in the regiment; for if I was out in a shower of rain, I’d polish up my brass and pipeclay my belt, to make it look clean again. Besides, I was very supple and active, and many’s the time Colonel Aynsley has sent me on a message, and I have been there and back, and when I’ve met him he’s scolded me for not having gone, for I was back so quick he thought I hadn’t started.

“Whilst I was in the regiment I was attacked with blindness; brought on, I think, by cold. There was a deserter, that the policemen took up and brought to our barracks at Weedon, where the 93rd was stationed in 1852. It was very wet weather, and he was brought in without a stitch on him, in a pair of breeches and a miserable shirt—that’s all. He was away two years, but he was always much liked. No deserters ever escape. We made a kit up for this man in less than twenty minutes. One gave him a kilt, another a coat, and I gave him the shoes off my feet, and then went to the regiment stores and got me another pair. Soldiers always help one another; it’s their duty to such a poor, miserable wretch as he was.

“This deserter was tried by court-martial, and he got thirty-one days in prison, and hard labour. He’d have had three months, only he gave himself up. He was so weak with lying out, that the doctor wouldn’t let him be flogged. He’d have had sixty lashes if he’d been strong. Ah! sixty is nothing. I’ve seen one hundred and fifty given. When this man was marched off to Warwick gaol I commanded the escort, and it was a very severe day’s rain that day, for it kept on from six in the morning till twelve at night. It was a twenty-one miles’ march; and we started at six in the morning, and arrived at Warwick by four in the afternoon. The prisoner was made to march the distance in the same clothes as when he gave himself up. He had only a shirt and waistcoat on his back, and that got so wet, I took off my greatcoat and gave it to him to wear to warm him. They wouldn’t let him have the kit of clothes made up for him by the regiment till he came out of prison. From giving him my greatcoat I caught a severe cold. I stood up by a public-house fire and dried my coat and kilt, and the cold flew to the small of my back. After we had delivered our prisoner at Warwick we walked on to Coventry—that’s ten miles more. We did thirty-one miles that day in the rain. After we got back to barracks I was clapped in hospital. I was there twenty-one days. The doctor told me I shouldn’t leave it for twenty-eight days, but I left it in twenty-one, for I didn’t like to be in that same place. My eyes got very blood-shot, and I lost the sight of them. I was very much afraid that I’d never see a sight with my eyes, and I was most miserable. I used to be, too, all of a tremble with a shiver of cold. I only stopped in the regiment for thirty-one days after I came out of hospital, and then I had my discharge. I could just see a little. It was my own fault that I had my discharge, for I thought I could do better to cure myself by going to the country doctors. The men subscribed for me all the extra money of their pay,—that’s about 4d. each man,—and it made me up 10l. When I told Colonel Aynsley of this, says he, ‘Upon my word, M‘Gregor, I’m as proud of it as if I had 20,000l.’ He gave me a sovereign out of his own pocket. Besides that, I had as many kilts given me as have lasted me up to this time. My boy is wearing the last of ’em now.

“At Oxford I went to a doctor, and he did me a deal of good; for now I can read a book, if the thread of it isn’t too small. I can read the Prayer-book, or Bible, or newspaper, just for four hours, and then I go dim.

“I’ve served in India, and I was at the battles of Punjaub, 1848, and Moultan, 1849. Sir Colin Campbell commanded us at both, and says he, ‘Now, my brave 93rd, none of your nonsense here, for it must be death and glory here to-day;’ and then Serjeant Cameron says, ‘The men are all right, Sir Colin, but they’re afraid you won’t be in the midst of them;’ and says he, ‘Not in the midst of them! I’ll be here in ten minutes.’ Sir Colin will go in anywhere; he’s as brave an officer as any in the service. He’s the first into the fight and the last out of it.

“Although I had served ten years, and been in two battles, yet I was not entitled to a pension. You must serve twenty-one years to be entitled to 1s. 0½d. I left the 93rd in 1852, and since that time I’ve been wandering about the different parts of England and Scotland, playing on the bagpipes. I take my daughter Maria about with me, and she dances whilst I play to her. I leave my wife and family in town. I’ve been in London three weeks this last time I visited it. I’ve been here plenty of times before. I’ve done duty in Hyde-Park before the 46th came here.

“I left the army just two years before the war broke out, and I’d rather than twenty thousand pounds I’d been in my health to have gone to the Crimea, for I’d have had more glory after that war than ever any England was in. Directly I found the 93rd was going out, I went twice to try and get back to my old regiment; but the doctor inspected me, and said I wouldn’t be fit for service again. I was too old at the time, and my health wasn’t good, although I could stand the cold far better than many hundreds of them that were out there, for I never wear no drawers, only my kilt, and that very thin, for it’s near worn. Nothing at all gives me cold but the rain.

“The last time I was in London was in May. My daughter dances the Highland fling and the sword-dance called ‘Killim Callam.’ That’s the right Highland air to the dance—with two swords laid across each other. I was a good hand at it before I got stiff. I’ve done it before all the regiment. We’d take two swords from the officers and lay them down when they’ve been newly ground. I’ve gone within the eighth of an inch of them, and never cut my shoe. Can you cut your shoes? aye, and your toes, too, if you’re not lithe. My brother was the best dancer in the army: so the Duke of Argyle and his lady said. At one of the prize meetings at Blair Athol, one Tom Duff, who is as good a dancer as from this to where he is, says he, ‘There’s ne’er a man of the Macgregor clan can dance against me to-day!’ and I, knowing my brother Tom—he was killed at Inkermann in the 93rd—was coming, says I, ‘Don’t be sure of that, Tom Duff, for there’s one come every inch of the road here to-day to try it with you.’ He began, and he took an inch off his shoes, and my brother never cut himself at all; and he won the prize.

“My little girl dances that dance. She does it pretty, but I’d be rather doubtful about letting her come near the swords, for fear she’d be cutting herself, though I know she could do it at a pinch, for she can be dancing across two baccy-pipes without breaking them. When I’m in the streets, she always does it with two baccy-pipes. She can dance reels, too, such as the Highland fling and the reel Hoolow. They’re the most celebrated.

“Whenever I go about the country I leave my wife and family in London, and go off with my girl. I send them up money every week, according to what I earn. Every farthing that I can spare I always send up. I always, when I’m travelling, make the first part of my journey down to Hull in Yorkshire. On my road I always stop at garrison towns, and they always behave very well to me. If they’ve a penny they’ll give it to me, either English, Scotch, or Irish regiments; or I’d as soon meet the 23d Welsh Fusiliers as any, for they’ve all been out with me on service. At Hull there is a large garrison, and I always reckon on getting 3s. or 4s. from the barracks. When I’m travelling, it generally comes to 15s. a-week, and out of that I manage to send the wife 10s. and live on 5s. myself. I have to walk all the way, for I wouldn’t sit on a rail or a cart for fear I should lose the little villages off the road. I can do better in many of them than I can in many of the large towns. I tell them I am an old soldier. I don’t go to the cottages, but to the gentlemen’s houses. Many of the gentlemen have been in the army, and then they soon tell whether I have been in service. Some have asked me the stations I have been at, and who commanded us; and then they’ll say, ‘This man is true enough, and every word of it is truth.’

“I’ve been in Balmoral many a dozen of times. Many a time I’ve passed by it when it was an old ruin, and fit for nothing but the ravens and the owls. Balmoral is the fourth oldest place in Scotland. It was built before any parts of Christianity came into the country at all. I’ve an old book that gives an account of all the old buildings entirely, and a very old book it is. Edinbro’ Castle is the oldest building, and then Stirling Castle, and then Perth Castle, and then Balmoral. I’ve been there twice since the Queen was there. If I’d see any of the old officers that I knew at Balmoral, I’d play then, and they might give me something. I went there more for curiosity, and I went to see the Queen come out. She was always very fond of the 93rd. They’d fight for her in any place, for there isn’t a man discharged after this war but they’re provided for.

“I do pretty well in London, taking my 4s. a-day, but out of that I must pay 1s. 9d. a-week lodging-money, for I can’t go into apartments, for if I did it would be but poorly furnished, for I’ve no beds, or furniture, or linen.

“I can live in Scotland much cheaper than here. I can give the children a good breakfast of oatmeal-porridge every morning, and that will in seven weeks make them as fat as seven years of tea and coffee will do here. Besides, in Scotland, I can buy a very pretty little stand-up bedstead for 2s., which here would come to 4s. I’m thinking of sending my family down to Scotland, and sending them the money I earn in London. They’ll have to walk to Hull and then take the boat. They can get to Aberdeen from there. We shall have to work the money on the road.

“When I go out working with the little girl, I get out about nine in the summer and ten in the winter. I can’t work much more than four hours a-day on the pipes, for the blowing knocks me up and leaves me very weak. No, it don’t hurt my chest, but I’ll be just quite weak. That’s from my bad health. I’ve never had a day’s health ever since I left the regiment. I have pains in my back and stitches in the side. My girl can’t dance without my playing, so that when I give over she must give over too. I sometimes go out with two of my daughters. Lizzy don’t dance, only Maria. I never ax anybody for money. Anybody that don’t like to give we never ax them.

“I can’t eat meat, for it won’t rest on my stomach, and there’s nothing I take that goes so well with me as soup. I live principally on bread, for coffee or tea won’t do for me at all. If I could get a bit of meat that I like, such as a small fowl, or the like of that, it would do with me very well; but either bacon or beef, or the like of that, is too strong for me. I’m obliged to be very careful entirely with what I eat, for I’m sick. A lady gave me a bottle of good old foreign port about three months ago, and I thought it did me more good than all the meat in the world.

“When I’m in London I make about 4s. a-day, and when I’m in the country about 15s. a-week. My old lady couldn’t live when I travel if it wasn’t for my boy, who goes out and gets about 1s. a-day. Lord Panmure is very good to him, and gives him something whenever he meets him. I wouldn’t get such good health if I stopped in London. Now there’s Barnet, only eleven miles from St. Giles’s, and yet I can get better health in London than I can there, on account of it’s being on rising ground and fresh air coming into it every minute.

“I never be a bit bad with the cold. It never makes me bad. I’ve been in Canada with the 93d in the winter. In the year ’43 was a very fearful winter indeed, and we were there, and the men didn’t seem to suffer anything from the cold, but were just as well as in any other climate or in England. They wore the kilt and the same dress as in summer. Some of them wore the tartan trowsers when they were not on duty or parade, but the most of them didn’t—not one in a dozen, for they looked upon it as like a woman. There’s nothing so good for the cold as cold water. The men used to bathe their knees and legs in the cold water, and it would make them ache for the time, but a minute or two afterwards they were all right and sweating. I’ve many a time gone into the water up to my neck in the coldest days of the year, and then when I came out and dried myself, and put on my clothes, I’d be sweating afterwards. There can’t be a better thing for keeping away the rheumatism. It’s a fine thing for rheumatism and aches to rub the part with cold frosty water or snow. It makes it leave him and knocks the pains out of his limbs. Now, in London, when my hands are so cold I can’t play on my pipes, I go to a pump and wash them in the frosty water, and then dry them and rub them together, and then they’re as warm as ever. The more a man leans to the fire the worse he is after. It was leaning to a fire that gave me my illness.

“The chanter of the pipes I play on has been in my family very near 450 years. It’s the oldest in Scotland, and is a heir-loom in our family, and they wouldn’t part with it for any money. Many’s a time the Museum in Edinburgh has wanted me to give it to them, but I won’t give it to any one till I find myself near death, and then I’ll obligate them to keep it. Most likely my youngest son will have it, for he’s as steady as a man. You see, the holes for the fingers is worn as big round as sixpences, and they’re quite sharp at the edges. The ivory at the end is the same original piece as when the pipe was made. It’s breaking and splitting with age, and so is the stick. I’ll have my name and the age of the stick engraved on the sole of the ivory, and then, if my boy seems neglectful of the chanter, I’ll give it to the Museum at Edinburgh. I’ll have German silver rings put round the stick, to keep it together, and then, with nice waxed thread bound round it, it will last for centuries yet.

“This chanter was made by old William McDonnall, who’s been dead these many hundred years. He was one of the best pipe-makers that’s in all Scotland. There’s a brother of mine has a set of drones made by him, and he wouldn’t give them for any sit of money. Everybody in Scotland knows William McDonnall. Ask any lad, and he’ll tell you who was the best pipe-maker that ever lived in Scotland—aye, and ever will live. There’s many a farmer in Scotland would give 30l. for a set of pipes by old William McDonnall, sooner than they’d give 30s. for a set of pipes made now. This chanter has been in our family ever since McDonnall made it. It’s been handed down from father to son from that day to this. They always give it to the eldest. William McDonnall lived to be 143 years old, and this is the last chanter he made. A gentleman in London, who makes chanters, once gave me a new one, merely for letting him take a model of my old one, with the size of the bore and the place for the holes. You tell a good chanter by the tone, and some is as sweet as a piano. My old chanter has got rather too sharp by old age, and it’s lost its tone; for when a stick gets too sharp a sound, it’s never no good. This chanter was played by my family in the battles of Wallace and Bruce, and at the battle of Bannockburn, and every place whenever any of the Macgregor clan fought. These are the traditions given from family to family. I heard it from my father, and now I tell my lads, and they know it as well as I do myself. My great grandfather played on this stick when Charley Stuart, the Pretender, came over to Scotland from France, and he played on it before the Prince himself, at Stirling and the Island of Skye, and at Preston Pans and Culloden. It was at Preston Pans that the clans were first formed, and could be told by their tartans—the Macgregors, and the Stuart, and the Macbeths, and the Camerons, and all of them. I had three brothers older than me, but I’ve got this chanter, for I begged it of them. It’s getting too old to play on, and I’ll have a copper box made for it, and just carry it at my side, if God is good to me, and gives me health to live three weeks.

“About my best friends in London are the French people,—they are the best I can meet, they come next to the Highlanders. When I meet a Highlander he will, if he’s only just a labouring man, give me a few coppers. A Highlander will never close his eye upon me. It’s the Lowlander that is the worst to me. They never takes no notice of me when I’m passing: they’ll smile and cast an eye as I pass by. Many a time I’ll say to them when they pass, ‘Well, old chap, you don’t like the half-naked men, I know you don’t!’ and many will say, ‘No, I don’t!’ I never play the pipes when I go through the Lowlands,—I’d as soon play poison to them. They never give anything. It’s the Lowlanders that get the Scotch a bad name for being miserable, and keeping their money, and using small provision. They’re a disgrace to their country.

“The Highlander spends his money as free as a duke. If a man in the 93rd had a shilling in his pocket, it was gone before he could turn it twice. All the Lowlanders would like to be Highlanders if they could, and they learn Gaelic, and then marry Highland lassies, so as to become Highlanders. They have some clever regiments composed out of the Lowlanders, but they have only three regiments and the Highlanders have seven; yet there’s nearly three to one more inhabitants in the Lowlands. It’s a strange thing, they’d sooner take an Irishman into a Highland regiment than a Lowlander. They owe them such a spleen, they don’t like them. Bruce was a Lowlander, and he betrayed Wallace; and the Duke of Buccleuch, who was a Lowlander, betrayed Stuart.

“I never go playing at public-houses, for I don’t like such places. I am not a drinker, for as much whisky as will fill a teaspoon will lay me up for a day. If I take anything, it’s a sup of porter. I went once into a public-house, and there was a woman drinking in it, and she was drunk. It was the landlord told me to come inside. She told me to leave the house, and I said the master told me to come: then she took up one of these pewter pots and hit me in the forehead. It was very sore for three weeks afterwards, and made a hole. I wouldn’t prosecute her.

“My little boy that goes about is fourteen years old, and he’s as straight and well-formed as if he was made of wax-work. He’s the one that shall have the chanter, if anybody does; but I’m rather doubtful about it, for he’s not steady enough, and I think I’ll leave it to a museum.

“If I had a good set of pipes, there’s not many going about the streets could play better; but my pipes are not in good order. I’ve got three tunes for one that the Queen’s piper plays; and I can play in a far superior style, for he plays in the military style. McKay, the former piper to her majesty, he was reckoned as good a player as there is in Scotland. I knew him very well, and many and many a time I’ve played with him. He was took bad in the head and obliged to go back to Scotland. He is in the Isle of Skye now. I belong to Peterhead. If I had a good set of pipes I wouldn’t be much afraid of playing with any of the pipers.

“In the country towns I would sometimes be called into Highland gentlemen’s houses, to play to them, but never in London.

“I make all my reeds myself to put in the stick. I make them of Spanish cane. It’s the outer glazed bark of it. The nearer you go to the shiny part, the harder the reed is, and the longer it lasts. In Scotland they use the Spanish cane. I have seen a man, at one time, who made a reed out of a piece of white thorn, and it sounded as well as ever a reed I saw sound; but I never see a man who could make them, only one.”

“My father is a Highlander, and was born in Argyllshire, and there, when he was 14 or 15, he enlisted for a piper into the 92nd. They wear the national costume in that regiment—the Campbell tartan. Father married whilst he was in Scotland. We are six in family now, and my big brother is 17, and I’m getting on for 15—a little better than 14. We and another brother of 10, all of us, go about the streets playing the bagpipes.

“Father served in India. It was after I was born (and so was my other brother of 10) that the regiment was ordered over there. Mother came up to England to see him off, and she has stopped in London ever since. Father lost a leg in the Punjaub war, and now he receives a pension of 1s. a-day. Mother had a very bad time of it whilst father was away; I don’t know the reason why, but father didn’t send her any money. All her time was taken up looking after us at home, so she couldn’t do any work. The parish allowed her some money. She used to go for some food every week. I can remember when we were so hard up. We lived principally on bread and potatoes. At last mother told Jim he had better go out in the streets and play the bagpipes, to see what he could pick up. Father had left some pipes behind him, small ones, what he learnt to play upon. Jim wasn’t dressed up in the Highland costume as he is now. He did very well the first time he went out; he took about 10s. or so. When mother saw that she was very pleased, and thought she had the Bank of England tumbled into her lap. Jim continued going out every day until father came home. After father lost his leg he came home again. He had been absent about eighteen months. The pipers always go into action with the regiment. When they are going into the field they play in front of the regiment, but when the fighting begins they go to the side. He never talks about his wound. I never heard him talk about it beyond just what I’ve said; as to how they go into war and play the regiment into the field. I never felt much curiosity to ask him about it, for I’m out all day long and until about 10 o’clock at night, and when I get home I’m too tired to talk; I never think about asking him how he was wounded.

“When father came home from India he brought 10l. with him. He didn’t get his pension not till he got his medal, and that was a good while after—about a year after, I should say. This war they gave the pension directly they got home, but the other war they didn’t. Jim still continued playing in the streets. Then father made him a Highland suit out of his old regimentals. He did better then; indeed he one day brought home a pound, and never less than five, or nine or ten, shillings. Next, father made me a suit, and I used to go out with Jim and dance the fling to his bagpipes. I usen’t to take no carpet with me, but dance in the middle of the road. I wear father’s regimental-belt to this day, only he cut it down smaller for me. Here’s his number at the end of it, 62, and the date, 1834—so it’s twenty-two years old, and it’s strong and good now, only it’s been white buff leather, and my father’s blacked it. We didn’t take much more money going out together, but we took it quicker and got home sooner. Besides, it was a help to mother to get rid of me. We still took about 10s. a-day, but it got lesser and lesser after a time. It was a couple of years after we come out that it got lesser. People got stingier, or perhaps they was accustomed to see us, and was tired of the dancing. Whilst I was doing the dancing, father, when I got home of a night, used to teach me the bagpipes. It took me more than twelve months to learn to play. Now I’m reckoned a middling player.

“When I could play I went out with my big brother, and we played together; we did the tunes both together. No, I didn’t do a bass, or anything of that; we only played louder when we was together, and so made more noise, and so got more attention. In the day-time we walked along the streets playing. We did better the two playing together than when I danced. Sometimes gentlemen would tell us to come to their houses and play to ’em. We’ve often been to General Campbell’s and played to him, whilst he was at dinner sometimes, or sometimes after. We had 5s. or half-a-sovereign, according to the time we stopped there. There was about six or seven gentlemen like this, and we go to their houses and play for them. We get from one shilling to five for each visit. When we go inside and play to them it’s never less than 5s. They are all Scotch gentlemen that we go to see, but we have done it for one Englishman, but he’s the only one.

“When my little brother John was old enough to go out, father made him a Highland suit, and then he went out along with my big brother and danced to his playing, and I went out by myself. I did pretty well, but not so well as when I was with Jim. We neither did so well as when we were together, but putting both our earnings together we did better, for the two separated took more than the two joined.

“My little sister Mary has been out with me for the last month. Father made her a suit. It’s a boy’s, and not a girl’s costume, and she goes along with me. Whilst I play, she goes up to ladies and gentlemen and asks for the money. They generally give her something. She never says anything, only makes a bow and holds out her little hand. It was father’s notion to send her out. He said, ‘She may as well go out with one of you as be stopping at home.’ She stops out as long as I do. She doesn’t get tired, at least she never tells me she is. I always carry her home at night on my back. She is eight years old, and very fond of me. I buy her cakes as we go along. We dine anywhere we can. We have bread and cheese, and sometimes bread and meat. Besides, she’s very often called over and given something to eat. I’ve got regular houses where they always give me dinner. There’s one in Eaton-place where the servants are Scotch, and at the Duke of Argyle’s, out Kensington way, and another at York-terrace, Camden-town. It’s generally from Scotch servants I get the food, except at the Duke’s, and he orders me a dinner whenever I come that way. It ain’t the Lowland Scotch give me the food, only the Highland Scotch. Highlanders don’t talk with a drawl, only Lowlanders. I can tell a Highlander in a minute. I speak a few words of Gaelic to him.

“So you see I never have occasion to buy my dinner, unless I’m out at a place where I am too far to go, but I generally work up to my eating places.

“It’s about three years now since I’ve been out playing the pipe. Jim and Johnny go together, and I go with Mary. Between the two we take about 5s. a-day, excepting on Saturdays. I get home by ten, and have supper and then go to bed; but Jim he sometimes doesn’t come till very late, about one in the morning. At night we generally go down to the Haymarket, and play before the public-houses. The ladies and gentlemen both give us money. We pick up more at night-time than in the day. Some of the girls then make the gentlemen give us money. They’ll say, ‘Give the little fellow a penny.’ The highest I ever had given me at one time was a Scotch lady at a hotel in Jermyn-street, and she gave me a sovereign. I’ve often had half-a-crown give me in the Haymarket. It’s always from Scotch gentlemen. English have given me a shilling, but never more; and nearly all we take is from Scotch people. Jim says the same thing, and I always found it so.

“I’ve had a whole mob round me listening. Some of them will ask for this tune, and some for that. I play all Scotch tunes. ‘The Campbells are coming’ is the chief air they like. Some ask for the ‘Loch Harbour no more.’ That’s a sentimental air. ‘The Highland Fling,’ that is very popular; ‘Money Musk,’ and the ‘Miss Drummond of Perth’ is another they like very much. Another great favourite is ‘Maggie Lauder.’ That’s a song. When I play in a gentleman’s room I don’t put the drone on, but only play on the chanter, or what you would call the flute part of it. I cut off the drone, by putting the finger in the tall pipe that stands up against the shoulder, which we call the drone pipe. The wind goes up there; and if you stop it up, it don’t sound. A bagpipes has got five pipes—the chanter, the drone pipe, the two tenor pipes, and the blow-stick, through which you send the wind into the bag, which is of sheep-skin, covered with green baize. Every set of pipes is all alike. That’s the true Highland pipe. When I’m playing in the streets I put the drone on, and I can be heard miles off. I’ve very often had a horse shy at me. He won’t pass me sometimes, or if they do, they shy at me.

“I get the reeds which go inside my pipes, and which make the noise, from the Duke of Argyle’s piper. He’s a good friend to me, and very fond of me. They’re made of thin pieces of split cane, and it’s the wind going through them that makes them jar and give the music. Before I play, I have to wet them. They last me six or seven months, if I take care of them. The Duke of Argyle’s piper never grumbles when I go for new ones. When I go to him he makes me play to him, to see how I’ve got on with my music. He’s a splendid player, and plays from books. I play by ear. His pipes are of ebony, and with a silver chanter or flute-pipe. He plays every day to the Duke while he’s at dinner. My pipes are made out of cocoa-nut wood.

“I know the Duke very well. He’s very kind to his clan. He’s Campbell clan, and so am I. He never spoke to me; but he told the servants to give me dinner every time I came that way. The servants told me the Duke had promised me my dinner every time I came. When I touch my bonnet, he always nods to me. He never gave me only a shilling once, but always my dinner. That’s better for me.

“I wear the regular Highland costume, but I don’t wear the Campbell plaid, only the Stuart, because it’s cheaper. My kilt ain’t a regular one, because it’s too dear for me. In a soldier’s kilt it’s reckoned there’s thirty-two yards; mine has only got two and a half. My philibeg ought by rights to be of badgers’ skin, with a badger’s head on the top, and with tassels set in brass caps; but my philibeg is only sheep-skin. The centre is made up to look like the real one. Father makes all our clothes. He makes the jackets, and the belts even, down to the German silver buckles, with the slide and the tip. He cuts them out of sheet metal. He casts our buttons, too, in pewter. They are square ones, you see, with a Highlander on them. He makes our shoes, too, with the little buckle in front. Mother knits the stockings. They are mixed—red and blue mixed. I wear out about three a-year. She makes about twelve pairs a-year for us all. We buy our tartan and our bonnets, but make the pewter thistles at the side and the brooch which fastens the scarf on one shoulder. A suit of clothes lasts about twelve months, so that father has to make four suits a-year for us all; that is for Jim, myself, Johnny, and Mary. The shoes last, with repairing, twelve months. There’s twenty buttons on each coat. Father has always got something to do, repairing our clothes. He’s not able to go out for his leg, or else he’d go out himself; and he’d do well playing, for he’s a first-rate piper, but not so good as the Duke’s.

“We go about with our bare legs, and no drawers on. I never feel cold of my legs; only of my fingers, with playing. I never go cold in the legs. None of the Highlanders ever wear drawers; and none but the rich in Scotland wear stockings and shoes, so that their legs are altogether bare.

“When I’m marching through the streets, and playing on the pipes, I always carry my head high up in the air, and throw my legs out well. The boys will follow for miles—some of them. The children very often lose theirselves from following me such a way. Even when I haven’t my pipes with me the boys will follow me in a mob. I’ve never been ill-treated by boys, but a drunken man, often on a Saturday night, gives me a push or a knock. You see, they’ll begin dancing around me, and then a mob will collect, and that sets the police unto me; so I always play a slow tune when drunken men come up, and then they can’t dance. They’ll ask for a quick tune, and as I won’t play one, they’ll hit me or push me about. The police never interfere unless a mob collects, and then they are obliged, by their regulations, to interfere.

“I never carried a dirk, or a sword, or any thing of that. My brother used to have one in his stocking; but one day he was called up into a public house, where there was a lot of French butlers and footmen, and they would have him to play; and when he had for some time they begun to pull him about, and they broke his pipes and snapped the chanter in two; so Jim pulled out his dirk, and they got frightened. They tried to take it from him, but they couldn’t. He’s a bold fellow, and would do anything when he’s in a passion. He’d have stuck one of the French fellows if he could. When father heard of it he took the dirk away, for fear Jim should get into mischief.

“When I’ve been playing the pipes for long I get very thirsty. It’s continually blowing into the bag. I very seldom go and get any beer; only at dinner half-a-pint. I go to a pump and have a drink of water. At first it made me feel sick, blowing so much; but I very soon got used to it. It always made me feel very hungry, blowing all day long; I could eat every two or three hours. It makes your eyes very weak, from the strain on them. When I first went out with my brother, playing, I used to have to leave off every now and then and have a rest, for it made my head ache. The noise doesn’t affect the hearing, nor has it Jim: but my father’s quite deaf of the left ear, where the drones goes. I never have the drones on, only very seldom. When I have them on I can’t hear anything for a few seconds after I leave off playing.

“Sometimes, of wet nights, I go into public-houses and play. Some publicans won’t let you, for the instrument is almost too loud for a room. If there’s a Scotchman in the tap-room he’ll give me something. I do well when there’s good company. I only go there when it rains, for my usual stand of an evening is in the Haymarket.

“The bagpipes I play on were sent from Edinburgh. Father wrote for them, and they cost 30s. They are the cheapest made. There are some sets go as high as a 100l. They are mounted with gold and silver. The Duke of Argyle’s piper must have paid 100l. for his, I should say, for they are in silver. The bag is covered with velvet and silk fringe. There’s eight notes in a long pipes. You can’t play them softly, and they must go their own force.

“I know all those pipers who regular goes about playing the pipes in London. There’s only four, with me and my brother—two men and us two. Occasionally one may pass through London, but they don’t stop here more than a day or two. I know lots of them who are travelling about the country. There’s about twenty in all. I take about 15s. a-week, and Jim does the same. That’s clear of all expenses, such as for dinner, and so on. We sometimes take more, but it’s very odd that we seldom has a good week both of us together. If he has a good week, most likely I don’t. It comes, taking all the year round, to about 15s. a-week each. We both of us give whatever we may earn to father. We never go out on a Sunday. Whenever I can get home by eight o’clock I go to a night-school, and I am getting on pretty well with my reading and writing. Sometimes I don’t go to school for a week together. It’s generally on the Wednesday and Thursday nights that I can get to school, for they are the worst nights for working in the streets. Our best nights are Saturday and Monday, and then I always take about 5s. Tuesday it comes to about 3s.; but on Wednesday, and Thursday, and Friday, it don’t come to more than 2s. 6d.; that’s if I am pretty lucky; but some nights I don’t take above 6d.; and that’s how I put it down at 15s. a-week, taking the year round. Father never says anything if I don’t take any money home, for he knows I’ve been looking out for it: but if he thought I’d been larking and amusing myself, most likely he’d be savage.”

“I play on the same instrument as the Savoyards play, only, you understand, you can have good and bad instruments; and to have a good one you must put the price. The one I play on cost me 60 francs in Paris. There are many more handsome, but none better. This is all that there is of the best. The man who made it has been dead sixty years. It is the time that makes the value of it.

“My wife plays on the violin. She is a very good player. I am her second husband. She is an Italian by birth. She played on the violin when she was with her first husband. He used to accompany her on the organ, and that produced a very fine effect.

“The hurdy-gurdy is like the violin—it improves with age. My wife told me that she once played on a very old violin, and the difference between that and her own was curious for sound. She was playing, with her husband accompanying her on the organ, near the château of an old marquis; and when he heard the sound of the violin he asked them in. Then he said, ‘Here, try my violin,’ and handed her the old violin. My wife said that when she touched it with the bow, she cried, ‘Ah, how fine it is!’ It was the greatest enjoyment she had known for years. You understand, the good violins all bridge where the bridge is placed, but the new violins sink there, and the tune is altered by it. They call the violins that sink ‘consumptive’ ones.

“I am Dijon. The vineyard of Clos Nangent is near to Dijon. You have heard of that wine. Oh, yes, of course you have! That clos belongs to a young man of twenty-two, and he could sell it for 2,500,000 francs if he liked. At Dijon the bottles sell for 7 francs.

“My mother and father did not live happily together. My father died when I had three years, and then my mother, who had only twenty years of age, married again, and you know how it often happens, the second father does not love the first family of his wife. Some Savoyards passed through our village, and I was sold to them. I was their slave for ten years. I learnt to play the hurdy-gurdy with them. I used to accompany an organ. I picked out note for note with the organ. When I heard an air, too, which I liked, I used to go to my room and follow the air from my memory upon the instrument. I went to Paris afterwards.

“You see I play on only one string in my hurdy-gurdy. Those which the Savoyards play have several strings, and that is what makes them drone. The hurdy-gurdy is the same as the violin in principle. You see the wheel of wood which I turn with the handle is like its bow, for it grates on the string, and the keys press on the string like the fingers, and produce the notes. I used to play on a droning hurdy-gurdy at first, but one night I went into a café at Paris, and the gentlemen there cried out, ‘Ah! the noise!’ Then I thought to myself—I had fifteen years—if I play on one string it will not produce so much noise as on two. Then I removed one string, and when I went the next night the gentlemen said, ‘Ah, that is much better!’ and that is why I play on one string.

“I used to sing in Paris. I learnt all that of new in the style of romances, and I accompanied myself on my hurdy-gurdy. At Paris I met my wife. She was a widow then. I told her that I would marry her when her mourning was over, which lasted nine months. I was not twenty then. I went about playing at the cafés, and put by money. But when we went to be married, the priests would not marry us unless we had our parents’ consents. I did not know whether my mother was dead. I hunted everywhere. As I could not find out, I lived with my wife the same as if we had been married. I am married to her now, but my children were all born before marriage. At last I went to the Catholic priest at Dover, and told him my life, and that I had four children, and wished to marry my wife, and he consented to marry us if I would get the consent of the priest of the place where I had lived last. That was Calais, and I wrote to the priest there, and he gave his consent, and now my children are legitimate. By the law of France, a marriage makes legitimate all the children born by the woman with whom you are united. My children were present at my marriage, and that produced a very droll effect. I have always been faithful to my wife, and she to me, though we were not married.

“When my wife is well, she goes out with me, and plays on the violin. It produces a very good effect. She plays the seconds. But she has so much to do at home with the children, that she does not come out with me much.

“My age is twenty-five, and I have voyaged for seventeen years. There are three months since I came in England. I was at Calais and at Boulogne, and it is there that I had the idea to come to England. Many persons who counselled us, told us that in England we should gain a great deal of money. That is why I came. It took three weeks before I could get the permission to be married, and during that time I worked at the different towns. I did pretty well at Dover; and after that I went to Ramsgate, and I did very well there. Yes, I took a great deal of money on the sands of a morning. I have been married a month now—for I left Ramsgate to go to be married. At Ramsgate they understood my playing. Unless I have educated people to play to, I do not make much success with my instrument. I play before a public-house, or before a cottage, and they say, ‘That’s all very well;’ but they do not know that to make a hurdy-gurdy sound like a violin requires great art and patience. Besides, I play airs from operas, and they do not know the Italian music. Now if I was alone with my hurdy-gurdy, I should only gain a few pence; but it is by my children that I do pretty well.

“We came to London when the season was over in the country, and now we go everywhere in the town. I cannot speak English; but I have my address in my pocket, if I lose myself. Je m’elance dans la ville. To day I went by a big park, where there is a château of the Queen. If I lose my way, I show my written address, and they go on speaking English, and show me the way to go. I don’t understand the English, but I do the pointed finger; and when I get near home, then I recognise the quarter.

“My little girl will have six years next February, and the little boy is only four years and a-half. She is a very clever little girl, and she notices everything. Before I was married, she heard me speaking to my wife about when we were to be married; and she’d say, constantly, ‘Ah, papa, when are you going to be married to mamma?’ We had a pudding on our marriage-day, and she liked it so much that now she very often says, ‘Oh, papa, I should like a pudding like that I had when you married mamma.’ That is compromising, but she doesn’t know any better.

“It was my little girl Eugénie who taught her brother Paul to dance. He liked it very much; but he is young yet, and heavy in his movements; but she is graceful, and very clever. At Boulogne she was much beloved, and the English ladies would give her packets of sugar-plums and cakes. When they dance, they first of all polk together, and then they do the Varsovienne together, and after that she does the Cachuca and the Mazurka alone. I first of all taught my girl to do the Polka, for in my time I liked the dance pretty well. As soon as the girl had learnt it, she taught her brother. They like dancing above all, when I encourage them, for I say, ‘Now, my children, dance well; and, above all, dance gracefully, and then I will buy you some cakes.’ Then, if they take a fancy to anything, if it is not too dear, I buy it for them, and that encourages them. Besides, when she says ‘Papa, when shall we go to France, and see my little brother who is out at nurse?’ then I say, ‘When we have earned enough money; so you must dance well, and, above all, gracefully, and when we have taken plenty of money we will be off.’ That encourages them, for they like to see me take plenty of money. The little girl accompanies the music on the castanets in the Cachuca. It is astonishing how well she plays them. I have heard grown-up artists in the cafés chantants, who don’t play them so well as she does. It is wonderful in so young a child. You will say she has learnt my style of playing on the hurdy-gurdy, and my movements; but it is the same thing, for she is as clever to other music. Sometimes, when she has danced, ladies come up and kiss her, and even carry her off into their houses, and I have to wait hours for her. When she sees that I gain money, she has much more courage. When the little girl has done dancing with my Paul, then he, when she is dancing alone, takes the plate and asks for money. He is very laughable, for he can already say, ‘If you please, misses.’ Sometimes the ladies begin to speak to him, he says, ‘Yes! yes!’ three or four times, and then he runs up to me and says, ‘Papa, that lady speaks English;’ and then I have to say, ‘No speak English.’ But he is contented if he hears anybody speak French. Then he runs up to me, and says, ‘Papa, papa, Monsieur speaks French.’

“My little girl has embroidered trowsers and petticoats. You won’t believe it, but I worked all that. The ends of the trowsers, the trimmings to her petticoats, her collars and sleeves, all I have worked. I do it at night, when we get home. The evenings are long and I do a little, and at the end of the week it becomes much. If I had to buy that it would cost too much. It was my wife who taught me to do it. She said the children must be well dressed, and we have no money to buy these things. Then she taught me: at first it seemed droll to me, and I was ashamed, but then I thought, I do it for my living and not for my pleasure, it is for my business; and now I am accustomed to do it. You would fancy, too, that the children are cold, going about in the streets dressed as they are, but they have flannel round the body, and then the jumping warms them. They would tell me directly if they were cold. I always ask them.

“The day I was married a very singular circumstance happened. I had bought my wife a new dress, and she, poor thing, sat up all night to make it. All night! It cost me five shillings, the stuff did. I had a very bad coat, and she kept saying, ‘I shall be gay, but you, my poor friend, how will you look?’ My coat was very old. I said, ‘I shall do as I am;’ but it made her sad that I had no coat to appear in style at our marriage. Our landlord offered to lend me his coat, but he was twice as stout as I am, and I looked worse than in my own coat. Just as we were going to start for the church, a man came to the house with a coat to sell—the same I have on now. The landlord sent him to me. It is nearly new, and had not been on more than three or four times. He asked 12s., and I offered 8s.; at last he took 9s. My wife, who is very religious, said, ‘It is the good God who sent that man, to reward us for always trying to get married.’

“Since I have been here, my affairs have gone on pretty well. I have taken some days 5s., others 6s., and even 8s.; but then some days rain has fallen, and on others it has been wet under foot, and I have only taken 4s. My general sum is 5s. 6d. the day, or 6s. Every night when I get home I give my wife what I have taken, and I say, ‘Here, my girl, is 3s. for to-morrow’s food,’ and then we put the remainder on one side to save up. We pay 5s. a-week for our room, and that is dear, for we are there very bad! very bad! for we sleep almost on the boards. It is lonely for her to be by herself in the day, but she is near her confinement, and she cannot go out.

“It makes me laugh, when I think of our first coming to this country. She only wore linen caps, but I was obliged to buy her a bonnet. It was a very good straw one, and cost 1s. It made her laugh to see everybody wearing a bonnet.

“When I first got to London, I did not know where to go to get lodgings. I speak Italian very well, for my wife taught me. I spoke to an Italian at Ramsgate, and he told me to go to Woolwich, and there I found an Italian lodging-house. There the landlord gave me a letter to a friend in London, and I went and paid 2s. 6d. in advance, and took the room, and when we went there to live I gave another 2s. 6d., so as to pay the 5s. in advance. It seems strange to us to have to pay rent in advance—but it is a custom.

“It costs me something to clothe my children. My girl has six different skirts, all of silk, of different colours, grey, blue, red, and yellow. They last the year. The artificial flowers on her head are arranged by her mamma. The boots cost the most money. She has a pair every month. Here they are 3s., but in France they are dearer. It is about the same for the little boy; only as he does not work so much as his sister, he is not dressed in so distinguished a style. He is clean, but not so elegant, for we give the best to the girl.

“My children are very good at home. Their mother adores them, and lets them do as they like. They are very good, indeed.

“On Sunday, they are dressed like other children. In the morning we go to mass, and then we go and walk a little, and see London. I have, as yet, made no friends in London. I know no French people. I have met some, but they don’t speak to me. We confine ourselves to our family.

“When I am in the streets with good houses in them, and see anybody looking at the windows, then if I see them listening, I play pieces from the operas on my hurdy-gurdy. I do this between the dances. Those who go to the opera and frequent the theatres, like to hear distinguished music.”

A poor, feeble, half-witted looking man, with the appearance of far greater age than he represented himself, (a common case with the very poor), told me of his sufferings in the streets. He was wretchedly clad, his clothes being old, patched, and greasy. He is well-known in London, being frequently seen with a crowd of boys at his heels, who amuse themselves in playing all kinds of tricks upon him.

“I play the harp in the streets,” he said, “and have done so for the last two years, and should be very glad to give it up. My brother lives with me; we’re both bachelors, and he’s so dreadful lame, he can do nothing. He is a coach-body maker by business. I was born blind, and was brought up to music; but my sight was restored by Dr. Ware, the old gentleman in Bridge-street, Blackfriars, when I was nine years old, but it’s a near sight now. I’m forty-nine in August. When I was young I taught the harp and the pianoforte, but that very soon fell off, and I have been teaching on or off these many years—I don’t know how many. I had three guineas a-quarter for teaching the harp at one time, and two guineas for the piano. My brother and I have 1s. and a loaf a-piece from the parish, and the 2s. pays the rent. Mine’s not a bad trade now, but it’s bad in the streets. I’ve been torn to pieces; I’m torn to pieces every day I go out in the streets, and I would be glad to get rid of the streets for 5s. a-week. The streets are full of ruffians. The boys are ruffians. The men in the streets too are ruffians, and encourage the boys. The police protect me as much as they can. I should be killed every week but for them; they’re very good people. I’ve known poor women of the town drive the boys away from me, or try to drive them. It’s terrible persecution I suffer—terrible persecution. The boys push me down and hurt me badly, and my harp too. They yell and make noises so that I can’t be heard, nor my harp. The boys have cut off my harp-strings, three of them, the other day, which cost me 6½d. or 7d. I tell them it’s a shame, but I might as well speak to the stones. I never go out that they miss me. I don’t make more than 3s. a-week in the streets, if I make that.”

“When I am come in this country I had nine or ten year old, so I know the English language better than mine. At that time there was no organ about but the old-fashioned one made in Bristol, with gold organ-pipe in front. Then come the one with figure-dolls in front; and then next come the piano one, made at Bristol too; and now the flute one, which come from Paris, where they make them. He is an Italian man that make them, and he is the only man dat can make them, because he paid for them to the government (patented them), and now he is the only one.

“I belong to Parma,—to the small village in the duchy. My father keep a farm, but I had three year old, I think, when he died. There was ten of us altogeder; but one of us he was died, and one he drown in the water. I was very poor, and I was go out begging there; and my uncle said I should go to Paris to get my living. I was so poor I was afraid to die, for I get nothing to eat. My uncle say, I will take one of them to try to keep him. So I go along with him. Mother was crying when I went away. She was very poor. I went with my uncle to Paris, and we walk all the way. I had some white mice there, and he had a organ. I did middling. The French people is more kind to the charity than the English. There are not so many beggar there as in England. The first time the Italian come over here we was took a good bit of money, but now——!

“When I was in Paris my uncle had to go home again on business. He ask me too if I would go with him. But I was afraid to be hungry again, for you see I was feel hungry again, and I wouldn’t, for I got a piece of bread in France.

“My uncle was along with another man, who was a master like, you know; for he had a few instrument, but common thing. I don’t know if he have some word wid my uncle, but they part. Den dis man say ‘Come to England with me,’ and he said ‘you shall have five franc the month, and your victual.’ We walk as far as Calais, and then we come in the boat. I was very sick, and I thought that I die then. I say to him plenty times ‘I wish I never come,’ for I never thought to get over.

“When we got to London, we go to a little court there, in Saffron-hill; and I was live there in the little public-house. I go out, sometime white mice, sometime monkey, sometime with organ—small one. I dare say I make 10s. a-week for him; but he wor very kind to me, and give me to eat what I like. He was take care of me, of course. I was very young at dat time.

“After I was in London a-year, I go back to Paris with my master. There I could have made my fortune, but I was so young I did not know what I do. There was an old lady who ask me to come as her servant. My master did not like very well to let me go. She say to me, ‘You shall not have no hard work, only to go behind the carriage, or follow with the umbrella.’ But I was so young I did not know my chance. I tell her I have my parent in Italy; and she say she go to Italy all the years, and I shall have two months to visit my mother. I did not go with this old lady, and I lose the chance; but I had only thirteen years, and I was foolish.

“Then I come to England again, and stop here three years. Where my master go, I was obliged to go too. Then I go to Italy, and I saw my moder. The most part of my family never know me when I went home, for I was grown much, and older. I stop there six weeks, and then I come back to England with anoder man. He give me 12 franc a-month, and very kind indeed he was. He had some broder in this country, so he take me along wid him. There was only me and him. My other master have two beside me.

“The master of organs send to Italy for boys to come here. Suppose I have a broder in Italy, I write to him to send me two boys, and he look out for them. They send money for the boy to come. Sometimes he send 3l., sometimes 3l. 10s. or 4l. Then they walk, and live on the pear or the grape, or what is cheap; and if they put by any, then they keep what they put by. They generally tell them they shall have 12 francs a-month. But sometime they was cheap; but now they are dear, and it is sometime a pound a-month. They’d sooner have one who have been here before, because den they know the way to take care of the instrument, you know.

“I stop in England two year and six month, when I come over with my second master. He paid me like a bank, and I saved it up, and I take it over to Italy with me. When I had a bit of money I was obliged to send it home to my broder in Italy, for to keep him, you know. When I go home again I had a bit of money with me. I give it to the gentleman what support my mother and sister; but it was not enough, you know, not three part, so I was obliged to give him a good bit more.

“Then I came back to England again, to the same master. It take about a month to make the voyage. I was walk it all the way. I was cross the Alps. You must to come over here. I dare say I walk thirty miles a-day, sometime more dan that. I sleep at the public-house; but when you not get to the public-house, then when it begins dark, then I go to the farm-house and ask for a bit of straw to lodge. But I generally goes to the public-house when I get one. They charge 3d. or 2d., or sometimes 1d. I never play anything on the road, or take de white mice. I never take nothing.

“After that time I have been to Italy and back three or four times; but I never been with no master, not after the second one. I bought an organ of my master. I think I give him 13l. No, sir, I not give the money down, but so much the week, and he trust me. It was according what I took, I paid him. I was trying to make up 1l. and bring him down. It take me about eighteen months to pay him, because I was obliged to keep me and one things and another. It was a middling organ. It was one was a piano, you know. I take about 1s. 3d. or 1s. 6d. a-day regularly with it.

“I have now an organ—a flute organ they call it—and it is my own. It cost me 20l. A man make it come from France. He knows an organ-maker in France, and he write for me, and make it come over for me. I suppose he had a pound profit for to make it come for me; for I think it cost less than 20l. in Paris.

“I have this organ this twelve months. It has worn out a little, but not much. It is not so good as when it come from France. An organ will wear twenty year, but some of them break. Then you must have it always repaired and tuned. You see, the music of it must be tuned every five or six months. Mine has never been tuned yet, the time I have it. It is the trumpet part that get out of tune sooner. I know a man who goes out with de big organ on the wheels, and he tune the organ for me. I go to him, and I say, ‘My organ wants de repair;’ and he come, and he never charge me anything. He make the base and tenor agree. He tune the first one to the base, you know, and then the second one to the second base. When the organ out of tune the pipe rattle.

“The organ fills with dust a good deal in the summer time, and then you must take it all to pieces. In London they can tune and repair it. They charge 10s. to clean and tune it. Sometime he have something to do with the pipes, and then it come to more. In winter the smoke get inside, and make it come all black. I am obliged to keep it all covered up when I am playing.

“My organ play eight tunes. Two are from opera, one is a song, one a waltz, one is hornpipe, one is a polka, and the other two is dancing tunes. One is from ‘Il Lombardi,’ of Verdi. All the organs play that piece. I have sold that music to gentlemens. They say to me, ‘What is that you play?’ and I say, ‘From Il Lombardi.’ Then they ask me if I have the music; and I say ‘Yes;’ and I sell it to them for 4s. I did not do this with my little organ; but when I went out with a big organ on two wheels. My little flute organ play the same piece. The other opera piece is ‘Il Trovatore.’ I have heard ‘Il Lombardi’ in Italy. It is very nice music; but never hear ‘Il Trovatore.’ It is very nice music, too. It go very low. My gentlemens like it very much. I don’t understand music at all. The other piece is English piece, which we call the ‘Liverpool Hornpipe.’ There is two Liverpool Hornpipe. I know one these twenty years. Then come ‘The Ratcatcher’s Daughter;’ he is a English song. It’s get a little old; but when it’s first come out the poor people do like it, but the gentlemens they like more the opera, you know. After that is what you call ‘Minnie,’ another English song. He is middling popular. He is not one of the new tune, but they do like it. The next one is a Scotch contre-danse. It is good tunes, but I don’t know the name of it. The next one is, I think, a polka; but I think he’s made from part of ‘Scotische.’ There is two or three tunes belongs to the ‘Scotische.’ The next one is, I think, a valtz of Vienna. I don’t know which one, but I say to the organ-man, ‘I want a valtz of Vienna;’ and he say, ‘Which one? because there is plenty of valtz of Vienna.’ Of course, there is nine of them. After the opera music, the valtz and the polka is the best music in the organ.

“For doing a barrel of eight tune it come very near 14l., one thing and another. You can have a fresh tune put into an old barrel. But then he charge 10s. He’s more trouble than to put only one. I have my tune changed once a-year. You see most of the people gets very tired of one tune, and I’m obliged to change them. You can have the new tune in three or four days, or a week’s time, if he has nothing to do; but sometime it is three or four weeks, if he has plenty to do. It is a man who is called John Hicks who does the new tunes. He was born in Bristol. He has a father in Bristol. He live in Crockenwell, just at the back of the House of Correction. You know the prison? then it is just at the back, on the other side.

“It won’t do to have all opera music in my organ. You must have some opera tunes for the gentlemen, and some for the poor people, and they like the dancing tune. Dere is some for the gentlemens, and some for the poor peoples.

“I have often been into the houses of gentlemens to play tunes for dancing. I have been to a gentleman’s near Golden-square, where he have a shop for to make the things for the horse—a saddler, you call it. He have plenty customers; them what gets the things for the horse. There was carriage outside. It was large room, where you could dance thirty-two altogether. I think it’s the boxing-day I go there. I have 10s. for that night. He have a farm in the country, and I go there too. He have the little children there—like a school, and there was two policemen at the door, and you couldn’t get in without the paper to show. He had Punch and Judy. He has a English band as well.

“I have some two or three place where I go regular at Christmas-time, to play all night to the children. Sometime I go for an hour or two. When they are tired of dancing they sit down and have a rest, and I play the opera tune. I go to schools, too, and play to the little children. They come and fetch me, and say, ‘You come such a time and play to the little children,’ and I say, ‘Very well,’ and that’s all right.

“My organ is like the organ, but he’s got another part, and that is like a flute. Some organ is called de trompet, and that one he’s called the flute-organ, because he’s got de flute in it. When they first come out they make a great deal of money. I take 2s. 6d. or 3s., and sometimes 1s. 6d. You see, in our business, some has got his regular customer, and some they go up the street and down the street, and they don’t take nothing. I have not got any regular customers much, sir.

“On the Monday when I goes out, I goes over the water up the Clapham-road. I have two or three regular there, and they give me plenty of beer and to eat. I know that family those twenty year. If I say to that lady, ‘I am very ill,’ he give me his card and say, ‘Go to the doctor,’ and I have nothing to pay. There was three sister, but one he died. They is very old, and one he can only come to the window. I dare say I have six houses in that neighbourhood where they give me some 1d. and some 2d. every time I go there. In the summer-time, when it is hot, I walk to Greenwich on the Monday. I have, I dare say, fifteen houses there where I go regular. I can make up 1s. I pay 4d. sometime to ride home in the boat. My organ weight more than fifty pounds, and that tire me. The first time when I’m not used to it, you know, I feel it more tired than when I’m used to it.

“On the Tuesday I go to Greenwich, now that it is cold, instead of the Monday. On Wednesday I ain’t got no way to go. I try sometime down at Whitechapel, or some other way. On Thursday I goes out Islington way, and I go as far as Highbury Barn, but not further. There is a bill of the railway and a station there. I’ve got three or four regular customers there. The most I get at once is 2d. I never get 6d. One gentleman at Greenwich give me 6d., but only once. On the Friday I’ve got no way to go; I go where I like. On Saturday I go to Regent-street. I go to Leicester-square and the foreign hotels, where the foreign gentlemen is. Sometime I get the chance to get a few shilling; sometime not a halfpenny. The most I make is sometime at the fair-time. Sometime at Greenwich-fair I make 5s. all in copper, and that is the most I ever make; and the lowest is sometime 6d. When I see I can’t make nothing, I go home. It is very bad in wet weather. I must sit at home, for the rain spoil the instrument. There is nothing like summer-times, for the regular money that I make for the year it come to between 9s. and 10s. the week. Sometimes it is 6d., sometimes 1s., or 1s. 6d. or 2s. the day. For 12s. the week it must be 2s. the day, and that is more than I take. I wish somebody pay me 12s.; there is no such chance.

“I live in a room by myself with three others, and we pay 1s. each, and there is two bed. If I go to lodging-house I pay 1s. 6d. the week. In the Italian lodging-house they give you clean shirt on the Sunday for the 1s. 6d. It is my own shirt, but they clean it. This is only in Italian house. In English house it is 1s. 6d. and no shirt. I have breakfast of coffee or what I like, and we club together. We have bread and butter, sometime herring, sometime bacon, what we likes. In the day I buy a pen’orth of bread and a pen’orth of cheese, and some beer, and at night I have supper. I make maccarone—what you call it?—or rice and cabbage, or I make soup or bile some taters; with all four together it come to about 9d. or 10d. a-day for living.

“In the house where I live they are all Italians. They are nearly all Italians that live about Leather-lane and Saffron-hill. There is a good bit of them live there. I should say 200: I dare say there is. The house where I live is my own. I let empty room; they bring their own things, you know. It is my lease, and I pay the rent.

“It is only the people say that the Italian boys are badly used: they are not so, the masters are very kind to them. If he make 1s. he bring it home; if 3s. or 4s. or 6d. he bring it home. He is not commandé to bring home so much; that is what the people say. I was with the magistrate of police in Marlborough-street four days ago, about a little Italian boy that the policemen take for asking money. Some one ask to buy his monkey and talk with him, and then he ask for a penny, and the police take him. A gentleman ask me about the boys. I tell him it is all nonsense what the people say. There is no more boys sent here now. If a boy comes over, and he is bad boys, he goes and play in the street instead of working; then, after paying so much for his coming to England, it is a loss. It does not pay the boys. If I was a master I would not have the boys, if they come here for nothing.

“Suppose I have two organs, then one is in the house doing nothing. Then some one come and say, ‘Lend me the organ for to-day.’ Then I say, ‘Yes,’ and charge him, some 4d., some 6d.; or if somebody ill and he cannot go out, then he’s organ doing nothing, and he lend it out for 4d. or 6d. There is two or three in London who sends out men with organs, but I don’t know who has got the most of us. Then they pay the men 1l. a-month and their keep, or some 15s. Then, some goes half and keep him: then, it’s more profits to the man than the master.

“Christmas-time is nothing like the summer-time. Sometimes they give you a Christmas-box, but it’s not the time for Christmas-box now. Sometimes it’s a glass of beer: ‘Here’s a Christmas-box for you.’ Sometimes it’s a glass of gin, or rum, or a piece of pudding: ‘Here’s a Christmas-box for you.’ I have had 6d., but never 1s. for a Christmas-box. Sometimes on a boxing-day it is 3s., or 2s. 6d. for the day.

“I have never travelled in the country with my organ, only once when I was young, as far as Liverpool, but no further. Many has got his regular time out in the country. When I go out with the organ I should say it make altogether that I walk ten miles. I want two new pairs of boots every year. I start off in the morning, sometimes eight, sometimes nine or ten, whether I have far to go. I never stop out after seven o’clock at night. Some do, but I don’t.

“I don’t know music at all. I am middling fond of it. There is none of the Italians that I know that sings. The French is very fond of singing.

“When first you begins, it tries the wrist, turning the handle of the organ; but you soon gets accustomed to it. At first, the arm was sore with the work all day. When I am playing I turn the handle regularly. Sometimes there are people who say, ‘Go a little quick,’ but not often.

“If the silk in front of the organ is bad, I get new and put it in myself; the rain spoil it very much. It depend upon what sort of organ he is, as to the sort of silk he gets: sometimes 2s. 6d. a-yard, and he take about a yard and a half. Some like to do this once a-year; but some when he see it get a little dirty, like fresh things, you know, and then it is twice a-year.

“The police are very quiet to us. When anybody throw up a window and say, ‘Go on,’ I go. Sometime they say there is sick in the house, when there is none, but I go just the same. If I did not, then the policeman come, and I get into trouble. I have heard of the noise in the papers about the organs in the street, but we never talk of it in our quarter. They pay no attention to the subject, for they know if anybody say, ‘Go,’ then we must depart. That is what we do.”

“The companion I got about with me, is with me from Naples, not the city, but in the country. His is of my family; no, not my cousin, but my mother was the sister of his cousin. Yes! yes! yes! my cousin. Some one told me he was my nephew, but it’s cousin. Naples is a pretty city. It is more pretty than Paris, but not so big. I worked on the ground at Naples, in the country, and I guarded sheep. I never was a domestic; but it was for my father. It was ground of his. It was not much. He worked the earth for yellow corn. He had not much of sheep, only fifteen. When I go out with the sheep I carry my bagpipes always with me. I play on them when I was sixteen years of age. I play them when I guard my sheep. In my country they call my instrument de ‘zampogna.’ All the boys in my country play on it, for there are many masters there who teach it. I taught myself to play it. I bought my own instrument. I gave the money myself for that affair. It cost me seven francs. The bag is made of a skin of goat. There are four clarionets to it. There is one for the high and one for the bass. I play them with different hands. The other two clarionets make a noise to make the accord; one makes high and the other the low. They drone to make harmony. The airs I play are the airs of my country. I did not invent them. One is ‘La Tarentule Italien,’ and another is what we call ‘La Badend,’ but I not know what you call it in French. Another is the ‘Death of the Roi de France.’ I know ten of these airs. The ‘Pastorelle Naopolitan’ is very pretty, and so is the ‘Pastorelle Romaine.’

“When I go out to guard my sheep I play my zampogna, and I walk along and the sheep follow me. Sometimes I sit down and the sheep eat about me, and I play on my instrument. Sometimes I go into the mountains. There are plenty of mountains in my country, and with snow on them. I can hear the guardians of sheep playing all around me in the mountains. Yes, many at once,—six, ten, twelve, or fifteen, on every side. No, I did not play my instrument to keep my sheep together, only to learn the airs. I was a good player, but there were others who played much better than me. Every night in my village there are four or six who play together instruments like mine, and all the people dance. They prefer to dance to the ‘Tarentule Italien.’ It is a pretty dance in our costume. The English do not dance like nous autres. We are not paid for playing in the village, only at fêtes, when gentlemen say, ‘Play;’ and then they give 20 sous or 40 sous, like that. There is another air, which is played only for singing. There is one only for singing chansons, and another for singing ‘La Prière de la Vierge.’ Those that play the zampogna go to the houses, and the candles are lighted on the altar, and we play while the bourgeois sing the prière.

“I am aged 23 years next March. I was sixteen when I learnt my instrument. The twelfth of this month I shall have left my country nine months. I have traversed the states of Rome and of France to come to England. I marched all the distance, playing my zampogna. I gain ten sous French whilst I voyage in the states of France. I march from Marseilles to Paris. To reach Marseilles by the boat it cost 15 frs. by head.

“The reason why we left our native land is this:—One of our comrades had been to Paris, and he had said he gained much money by painters by posing for his form. Then I had envy to go to Paris and gain money. In my country they pay 20 sous for each year for each sheep. I had 200 to guard for a monsieur, who was very rich. There were four of us left our village at the same time. We all four played de zampogna. My father was not content that I voyage the world. He was very sorry. We got our passport arranged tout de suite, two passport for us four. We all began to play our instruments together, as soon as we were out of the village. Four of our friends accompanied us on our road, to say adieu. We took bread of corn with us to eat for the first day. When we had finished that we played at the next village, and they give us some more bread.

“At Paris I posed to the artists, and they pay me 20 sous for the hour. The most I pose is four hours for the day. We could not play our instruments in the street, because the serjeant-de-ville catch us, and take us directly to prison. I go to play in the courts before the houses. I asked the concierge at the door if he would give me permission to play in the court. I gain 15 sous or 1 franc par jour. For all the time I rest in Paris I gain 2 francs for the day. This is with posing to artists to paint, and for playing. I also play at the barrière outside Paris, where the wine is cheap. They gave us more there than in the courts; they are more generous where they drink the wine.

“When I arrive at Paris my comrades have leave me. I was alone in Paris. There an Italian proposed to me to go to America as his servant. He had two organs, and he had two servants to play them, and they gave him the half of that which they gained. He said to me, that he would search for a piano organ for me, and I said I would give him the half of that which I gained in the streets. He made us sign a card before a notary. He told us it would cost 150 francs to go to America. I gave him the money to pay from Paris to Folkestone. From there we voyaged on foot to Londres. I only worked for him for eight days, because I said I would not go to Amérique. He is here now, for he has no money to go in Amérique.

“I met my cousin here in Londres. I was here fifteen days before I met him. We neither of us speak Anglais, and not French either, only a little very bad; but we understand it. We go out together now, and I play the zampogna, and he the ‘biforc Italien,’ or what the French call flageolet, and the English pipes. It is like a flageolet. He knows all the airs that I play. He play well the airs—that he does. He wears a cloak on his shoulders, and I have one, too; but I left it at home to-day. It is a very large cloak, with three yards of étoffe in it. He carry in his hat a feather of what you call here peacock, and a French lady give him the bright ribbon which is round his hat. I have also plume de peacock and flowers of stuff, like at the shops, round my hat. In my country we always put round our hat white and red flowers.

“Sometimes we go to pose to the artists, but it is not always. There are plenty of artists near Newman-street, but in other quarters there are none at all. It is for our costume they paint us. The colours they put on the pictures are those of our costume. I have been three times to a gentleman in a large street, where they took our portraits photographique. They give a shilling. I know the houses where I go to be done for a portrait, but I don’t know the names of the messieurs, or the streets where they reside. At the artists’ they pay 1s. par heure, and we pose two or three heures, and the most is four heures. When we go together we have 1s. each for the hour. My cousin is at an artist’s to-day. They paint him more than me, because he carries a sash of silk round his waist, with ornaments on it. I haven’t got one, because I want the money to buy one.

“We gain 1s. each the day. Ah! pardon, monsieur, not more than that. The artists are not for every day, perhaps one time for the week. When we first come here, we take 5s. between the two, but now it makes cold, and we cannot often play. Yesterday we play in the ville, and we take 7d. each. Plenty of persons look at us, but when my comrade touch his hat they give nothing. There is one month we take 2s. each the day, but now it is 1s. For the three months that we have been here, we have gained 12s. the week each, that is, if we count what we took when first we were arrived. For two months we took always a crown every day—always, always; but now it is only 1s., or 2s., or 7d. I had saved 72s., and I had it in my bourse, which I place under my head when I sleep. We sleep three in a bed—myself, my cousin, and another Italian. In the night this other take my bourse and run away. Now I have only 8s. in my bourse. It nearly broke the heart when I was robbed.

“We pay 2d. for each for our bed every night. We live in a house held by a Mossieu Italian. There are three who sleep in one bed—me, and my comrade, and another. We are not large. This mossieu let us lodge cheaper than others, because we are miserable, and have not much money. For breakfast we have a half-loaf each one. It is a loaf that you must pay 4d. or 4½d. We pay 2½d. each for that, and ½d. each for a cup of tea or coffee. In the day we eat 2d. or 3d. between both for some bread, and we come home the night at half-past eight, and we eat supper. It is of maccaroni, or potatoes boiled, and we pay 2½d. each. It costs us 9d. each the day to live. There are twenty-four Italian in the house where we live, and they have three kitchens. When one is more miserable than the others, then he is helped; and at another time he assists in his turn. We pay 2d. a-week to wash our shirt. I always share with my cousin what he makes in the day. If he goes to work and I stop at home, it is the same thing, and the same with me. He carries the money always, and pays for what we have want to eat; and then, if I wish to go back to my own country, then we share the money when we separate.

“The gentlemen give us more money than the ladies. We have never had anything to eat given to us. They have asked us to sing, but we don’t know how. Only one we have sung to, an Italian mossieu, who make our portraits. We sang the ‘Prayer of the Sainte Vierge.’ They have also asked us to dance, but we did not, because the serjeant-de-ville, if we assemble a great mob, come and defend us to play.

“We have been once before the magistrate, to force the mossieu who brought us over to render the passport of my native village. He has not rendered to me my card. We shall go before a magistrate again some day.

“I can write and read Italian. I did not go much to the school of my native village, but the master taught me what I know. I can read better than I write, for I write very bad and slow. My cousin cannot read and write. I also know my numbers. I can count quickly. When we write a letter, we go to an Italian mossieu, and we tell him to say this and that, and he puts it down on the paper. We pay 1s. for the letter, and then at the post they make us pay 2s. 2d. When my parents get a letter from me, they take it to a mossieu, or the schoolmaster of the village, to read for them, because they cannot read. They have sent me a letter. It was well written by a gentleman who wrote it for them. I have sent my mother five pieces of five francs from Paris. I gave the money, and they gave me a letter; and then my mother went to the consul at Naples, and they gave her the money. Since I have been here I could send no money, because it was stolen. If I had got it, I should have sent some to my parents. When I have some more, I shall send it.

“I love my mother very much, and she is good, but my father is not good. If he gain a piece of 20 sous, he goes on the morrow to the marchand of wine, and play the cards, and spend it to drink. I never send my money to my father, but to my mother.”

An Italian, who went about with trained monkeys, furnished me with the following account.

He had a peculiar boorish, and yet good-tempered expression, especially when he laughed, which he did continually.

He was dressed in a brown, ragged, cloth jacket, which was buttoned over a long, loose, dirty, drab waistcoat, and his trowsers were of broad-ribbed corduroy, discoloured with long wearing. Round his neck was a plaid handkerchief, and his shoes were of the extreme “strong-men’s” kind, and grey with dust and want of blacking. He wore the Savoy and broad-brimmed felt hat, and with it on his head had a very picturesque appearance, and the shadow of the brim falling on the upper part of his brown face gave him almost a Murillo-like look. There was, however, an odour about him,—half monkey, half dirt,—that was far from agreeable, and which pervaded the apartment in which he sat.

“I have got monkey,” he said, “but I mustn’t call in London. I goes out in countree. I was frightened to come here. I was frightened you give me months in prison. Some of my countrymen is very frightened what you do. No, sir, I never play de monkey in de town. I have been out vare dere is so many donkey, up a top at dat village—vat you call—I can’t tell de name. Dey goes dere for pastime,—pleasure,—when it makes fine weather. Dere is two church, and two large hotel,—yes, I tink it is Blackheath! I goes dere sometime vid my monkey. I have got only one monkey now,—sometime I have got two;—he is dressed comme un soldat rouge, like one soldier, vid a red jacket and a Bonaparte’s hat. My monkey only pull off his hat and take a de money. He used to ride a de dog; but dey stole a de dog,—some of de tinkare, a man vid de umbrella going by, stole a him. Dere is only tree months dat I have got my monkey. It is my own. I gave dirty-five shilling for dis one I got. He did not know no tricks when he come to me first. I did teach a him all he know. I teach a him vid de kindness, do you see. I must look rough for tree or four times, but not to beat him. He can hardly stir about; he is afraid dat you go to hit him, you see. I mustn’t feed him ven I am teaching him. Sometimes I buy a happorth of nuts to give him, after he has done what I want him to do. Dis one has not de force behind; he is weak in de back. Some monkey is like de children at de school, some is very hard to teash, and some learn de more quick, you see. De one I had before dis one could do many tings. He had not much esprit pas grande chose; but he could play de drum,—de fiddle, too,—Ah! but he don’t play de fiddle like de Christian, you know; but like de monkey. He used to fight wid de sword,—not exactly like de Christian, but like de monkey too,—much better. I beg your pardon to laugh, sir! He used to move his leg and jomp,—I call it danse,—but he could not do polka like de Christian.—I have seen the Christian though what can’t danse more dan de monkey! I beg your pardon to laugh. I did play valtz to him on de organ. Non! he had not moosh ear for de musick, but I force him to keep de time by de jerk of de string. He commence to valtz vell when he die. He is dead the vinter dat is passed, at Sheltenham. He eat some red-ee paint. I give him some castor-oil, but no good: he die in great deal pain, poor fellow! I rather lose six pounds than lose my monkey. I did cry!—I cry because I have no money to go and buy anoder monkey! Yes! I did love my monkey! I did love him for the sake of my life! I give de raisins, and bile dem for him. He have every ting he like. I am come here from Parma about fourteen or fifteen year ago. I used to work in my countree. I used to go and look at de ship in de montagnes: non! non! pas des vaisseaux, mais des moutons! I beg your pardon to laugh. De master did bring me up here,—dat master is gone to America now,—he is come to me and tell me to come to Angleterre. He has tell me I make plenty of money in dis country. Ah! I could get plenty of money in dat time in London, but now I get not moosh. I vork for myself at present. My master give me nine—ten shilling each veek, and my foot, and my lodging—yes! everyting ven I am first come here. I used to go out vid de organ,—a good one,—and I did get two, tree, and more shillan for my master each day. It was chance-work: sometimes I did get noting at all. De organ was my master’s. He had no one else but me wid him. We used to travel about togeder, and he took all de money. He had one German piano, and play de moosick. I can’t tell how moosh he did make,—he never tell to me,—but I did sheat him sometimes myself. Sometime when I take de two shillan I did give him de eighteen-pence! I beg your pardon to laugh! De man did bring up many Italians to dis country, but now it is difficult to get de passports for my countrymen. I was eighteen months with my master; after dat I vent to farm-house. I run away from my master. He gave me a slap of de face, you know, von time, so I don’t like it, you know, and run away! I beg your pardon to laugh! I used to do good many tings at de farm-house. It was in Yorkshire. I used to look at de beasts, and take a de vater. I don’t get noting for my vork, only for de sake of de belly I do it. I was dere about tree year. Dey behave to me very well. Dey give me de clothes and all I want. After dat I go to Liverpool, and I meet some of my countrymen dere, and dey lend me de monkey, and I teash him to danse, fight, and jomp, mush as I could, and I go wid my monkey about de country.

“Some day I make tree shillan wid my monkey, sometime only sixpence, and sometime noting at all. When it rain or snow I can get noting. I gain peut-être a dozen shillan a week wid my monkey, sometime more, but not often. Dere is long time I have been in de environs of London; but I don’t like to go in de streets here. I don’t like to go to prison. Monkey is defended,—defendu,—what you call it, London. But dere is many monkey in London still. Oh, non! not a dozen. Dere is not one dozen monkey wot play in Angleterre. I know dere is two monkey at Saffron hill, and one go in London; but he do no harm. I don’t know dat de monkey was train to go down de area and steal a de silver spoons out of de kitchen. Dey would be great fool to tell dat; but every one must get a living de best dey can. Wot I tell you about de monkey I’m frightened vill hurt me!

“I tell you dey is defended in de streets, and dey take me up. I hope not. My monkey is very honest monkey, and get me de bread. I never was in prison, and I would not like to be. I play de moosick, and please de people, and never steal noting. Non! non! me no steal, nor my monkey too. Dey policemen never say noting to me. I am not beggar, but artiste!—every body know dat—and my monkey is artiste too! I beg your pardon to laugh.”

I received the following narrative from the old man who has been so long known about the streets of London with a troop of performing dogs. He was especially picturesque in his appearance. His hair, which was grizzled rather than grey, was parted down the middle, and hung long and straight over his shoulders. He was dressed in a coachman’s blue greatcoat with many capes. His left hand was in a sling made out of a dirty pocket-handkerchief, and in his other he held a stick, by means of which he could just manage to hobble along. He was very ill, and very poor, not having been out with his dogs for nearly two months. He appeared to speak in great pain. The civility, if not politeness of his manner, threw an air of refinement about him, that struck me more forcibly from its contrast with the manners of the English belonging to the same class. He began:—

“I have de dancing dogs for de street—now I have nothing else. I have tree dogs—One is called Finette, anoder von Favorite, that is her nomme, an de oder von Ozor. Ah!” he said, with a shrug of the shoulders, in answer to my inquiry as to what the dogs did, “un danse, un valse, un jomp a de stick and troo de hoop—non, noting else. Sometime I had de four dogs—I did lose de von. Ah! she had beaucoup d’esprit—plenty of vit, you say—she did jomp a de hoop better dan all. Her nomme was Taborine!—she is dead dare is long time. All ma dogs have des habillements—the dress and de leetle hat. Dey have a leetel jackette in divers colours en étoffe—some de red, and some de green, and some de bleu. Deir hats is de rouge et noir—red and black, wit a leetle plume-fedder, you say. Dere is some 10 or 11 year I have been in dis country. I come from Italie—Italie—Oui, Monsieur, oui. I did live in a leetle ville, trento miglia, dirty mile, de Parma. Je travaille dans le campagne, I vork out in de countrie—je ne sais comment vous appellez la campagne. There is no commerce in de montagne. I am come in dis country here. I have leetel business to come. I thought to gagner ma vie—to gain my life wid my leetel dogs in dis countrie. I have dem déjà when I have come here from Parma—j’eu avait dix. I did have de ten dogs—je les apporte. I have carried all de ten from Italie. I did learn—yes—yes—de dogs to danse in ma own countrie. It did make de cold in de montagne in winter, and I had not no vork dere, and I must look for to gain my life some oder place. Après ça, I have instruct my dogs to danse. Yes, ils learn to danse; I play de music, and dey do jomp. Non, non—pas du tout! I did not never beat ma dogs; dare is a way to learn de dogs without no vip. Premièrement, ven I am come here I have gained a leetel monnaie—plus que now—beaucoup d’avantage—plenty more. I am left ma logement—my lodging, you say, at 9 hours in de morning, and am stay away vid ma dogs till 7 or 8 hours in de evening. Oh! I cannot count how many times de leetel dogs have danse in de day—twenty—dirty—forty peut-être—all depends: sometimes I would gain de tree shilling—sometime de couple—sometime not nothing—all depend. Ven it did make bad time, I could not vork; I could not danse. I could not gain my life den. If it make cold de dogs are ill—like tout de monde. I did pay plenty for de nouriture of de dogs. Sometime dey did get du pain de leetel dogs (de bread) in de street—sometime I give dem de meat, and make de soup for dem. Ma dogs danse comme les chiens, mais dey valtz comme les dames, and dey stand on dare back-legs like les gentilhommes. After I am come here to dis countrie two day, am terrible malade. I am gone to hospital, to St. Bartolomé, de veek before de Jour de Noël (Christmas-day). In dat moment I have de fevre. I have rested in l’hospital quatre semaine—four veek. Ma dogs vere at libertie all de time. Von compagnon of mine have promised me to take de care of ma dogs, and he have lose dem all—tout les dix. After dat I have bought tree oder dogs—one espanol, anoder von appellé ‘Grifon,’ and de oder vas de dog ordinaire,—non! non! not one ‘pull dog.’ He no good. I must have one month, or six semaine, to instruite ma dogs. I have rested in a logement Italien at Saffron-hill, ven I am come here to London. Dare vas plenty of Italiens dare. It was tout plein—quite full of strangers. All come dare—dey come from France, from Germany, from Italie. I have paid two shillings per semaine each veek—only pour le lit, for de bed. Every von make de kitchen for himself. Vot number vas dare, you say? Sometime dare is 20 person dere, and sometime dere is dirty person in de logement, sometime more dan dat. It is very petite maison. Dare is von dozen beds—dat is all—and two sleep demselves in each bed. Sometimes, ven dere arrive plenty, dey sleep demselves tree in von bed—but ordinairement dere is only two. Dey is all musicians dere—one play de organ, de piano, de guitar, de flute, yes, dare vos some vot played it, and de viol too. De great part vas Italiens. Some of dem have des monkeys, de oders des mice white, and des pigs d’Indes, (guinea-pigs) and encore oders have des dolls vid two heads, and des puppets vot danse vid de foot on de boards. Des animals are in an appartement apart vid de moosick. Dare vos sometime tree dancing dogs, one dozen of mice, five or six pigs d’Indes, and ma monkey, altogether vid de moosick, by demselves.

“Dare is all de actors vot vas dare. Ma tree dogs gained me sometime two shillan, sometime von shillan, and sometime I would rest on my feet all day, and not gain two sous. Sometimes de boys would ensault ma dogs vid de stones. Dare is long time I have rested in London. Dare is short time I vas in de campagne de countree here not much. London is better dan de campagne for ma dogs—dare is always de vorld in London—de city is large—yes! I am always rested at Saffron-hill for 10, 11 years. I am malade at present, since the 15th of Mars; in ma arms, ma legs, ma tighs have de douleure—I have plenty of pains to march. Ma dogs are in de logement now. It is since the 15th of Mars dat I have not vent out vid ma dogs—yes, since de 15th of Mars I have done no vork. Since dat time I have not paid no money for ma logement—it is due encore. Non! non! I have not gained my life since the 15th of Mars. Plenty of time I have been vitout noting to eat. Des Italiens at de logement dey have given me pieces of bread and bouilli. Ah! it is very miserable to be poor, like me. I have sixty and tirteen years. I cannot march now but vith plenty of pains. Von doctor have give to me a letter for to present to de poor-house. He did give me my medicine for nothing—gratis. He is obliged, he is de doctor of de paroisse. He is a very brave and honest man, dat doctor dare. At de poor-house day have give to me a bread and six sous on Friday of de veek dat is past, and told me to come de Vednesday next. But I am arrive dere too late, and dey give me noting, and tell me to come de Vednesday next encore. Ma dogs dey march now in de street, and eat something dare. Oh! ma God, non! dey eat noting but what dey find in de street ven it makes good times; but ven it makes bad times dey have noting at all, poor dogs! ven I have it, dey have it,—but ven dere is noting for me to eat, dare is noting for dem, and dey must go out in de streets and get de nouriture for themselves. Des enfans vot know ma dogs vill give to dem to eat sometimes. Oh! yes, if I had de means, I would return to Italie, ma countree. But I have not no silver, and not no legs to walk. Vot can I do? Oh! yes, I am very sick at present. All my limbs have great douleur—Oh, yes! plenty of pain.”

“I was always very fond of music, and if ever I heard any in the streets, I always followed it about. I’m nearly fifteen now; but I can remember when I was seven, being particularly taken with music. I had an uncle who was captain of a steamer that run to Richmond, and I was always on board with him; and they used to have a band on board. It wasn’t in particular a passage-boat, but an excursion one, and let to private parties, and a band always went along with them. I was taken along to run after orders for the steward; and when I had nothing to do, I used to go and listen to them. I learn all their tunes by heart. They mostly played dances, and very seldom any sentimental songs, unless anybody asked them. For myself, I prefer lively tunes. I don’t know much operatic music, only one or two airs; but they’re easier to play on the concertina than lively music, because it’s difficult to move the fingers very quickly. You can’t hardly play a hornpipe. It makes the arm ache before you can play it all through, and it makes such a row with the valve working the bellows up and down, that it spoils the music.

“I had not got my instrument when I was in this steamboat. When I heard a tune, I used to whistle it. I asked my father to buy me a instrument, but he wouldn’t. I was always on the steamboat, helping uncle; and I could have had lots of time to learn music there. When they, the musicians, put the harp down in the cabin, I’d get playing on it. There was a hole in the green baize cover of the harp, and I used to put my hand in and work away at it. I learnt myself several tunes, such as the ‘Sultan Polka.’ I must have been eight years old then. I didn’t play it with both hands: I couldn’t do the bass.

“I never had any lessons in music. I’ve done it all out of my own head. Before I had a concertina, I used to go about amusing myself with a penny tin whistle. I could play it pretty well, not to say all tunes, but all such as I knew I could play very well on it. The ‘Red, White, and Blue’ was my favourite tune.

“I have a brother, who is younger than I am, and he, before he was ten, was put out to a master to learn the violin. Father’s a labourer, and does something of anything he can get to do; but bricklaying generally. He paid so much a quarter for having my brother Henry taught. I think it was about 16s. a-quarter. It was a great expense for father at first; but afterwards, when we was hard up, Henry could always fly to the fiddle to earn a crust. Henry never took to music, not to say well. I can play more out of my own head than he can by notes. He’s a very good player now.

“I was about getting on for twelve when father first bought me a concertina. That instrument was very fashionable then, and everybody had it nearly. I had an accordion before; but it was only a 1s. 6d. one, and I didn’t take a fancy to it somehow, although I could play a few tunes on it. I used to see boys about my own height carrying concertinas about the streets, and humming them. I always wanted one. There was a little boy I knew, he got one, and then I wanted one worse. He used to come to our house, and play all sorts of tunes, for he played very well. I liked the concertina, because it’s like a full band. It’s like having the fiddle and the harp together. I used to ask this little boy to lend me his instrument, and I’d work the keys about a little, but I couldn’t do any airs.

“I play entirely out of my own head, for I never had any lessons at all. I learn the tunes from hearing other people playing of them. If I hear a street band, such as a fiddle and harp and cornopean playing a tune, I follow them and catch the air; and if it’s any sort of a easy tune at all, I can pick it up after them, for I never want to hear it more than twice played on an instrument.

“At last, after bothering father a long time, he bought me a half-crown concertina. I was in bed when he brought it into my room, and he put it on the bed; when I woke up I see it. I instantly set to work, and before I had got up I had learnt ‘Pop goes the Weasel.’ I was just pleased. I was up and dressed, and playing it all day long. I never used to let anybody touch, not even my own father hardly, for fear he should break it. I did break it once, and then I was regular dull, for fear I should lose my tunes.

“It took me six months before I could play it well, and then I could play a’most any tune I heard. The fingers had learnt the keys, and knew where the notes was, so that I could play in the dark. My brother could play the fiddle well, long before I could do any tunes. We used to play together duets, such as ‘A Boat, a Boat unto the Ferry.’ We never hardly went out together in the streets and play together, only once or twice, because a fiddle and a concertina don’t sound well together unless a harp’s with it, and then it’s beautiful.

“How I came to get on the steamboats was this: father went to take a trip up to Kew one day, so I wanted to go, and he said if I could earn my fare I might go. So I thought I’d take my concertina and try. So I went, and I earned that day about 9s., all in halfpence and 4d. bits. That was only by going up to Kew and coming back again. It was on a Whitsun-Monday. Then I thought I’d do it again the next day, and I think I took about the same. Then I kept on them all together. I didn’t keep to the Kew boats, because they had got their regular musicians, and they complained to the superintendent, and he forbid me going. Then I went to the Woolwich boats, and I used to earn a heap of money, as much as 10s. every day, and I was at it all the week for the season.

“I usen’t to pay any fare, but I got a free pass. It was mostly the crew. When I got out at the pier, I used to tell them I’d been playing, and they would let me pass. Now I know near every man that is on the river, and they let me go on any boat I like. They consider I draw customers, and amuse them during the trip. They won’t let some hardly play on board only me, because I’ve been on them such a long time—these three years. I know all the pier-masters, too, and they are all very kind to me. Sometimes, when I’m waiting for a boat to go up anywhere, I play on the piers, and I always do pretty fair.

“In winter I go on the boats all the same, and I play down in the cabin. Some of the passengers will object to it if they are reading, and then I have to leave off, or I should put my own self in a hobble, for they would go and tell the captain; and if he wouldn’t say anything, then they would tell the superintendent. In winter and wet weather is my worst time; but even then I mostly take my 3s. In the winter time, my best time is between three o’clock and six, when the gentlemen are coming home from office; and I never hardly come out before two o’clock. In summer its good from twelve till eight o’clock. The passengers come to go to the Crystal Palace in the morning part. Those that are going out for pleasure are my best customers. In the summer I always take at the rate of about 6s. a-day. Pleasure-people mostly ask me for dancing tunes; and the gentlemen coming from business prefer song tunes. I have got a good many regular gentlemen, who always give me something when they are coming from business. There are some who give me 6d. every day I see them; but sometimes they go up by a different boat to what I’m in. There’s one always gives me 6d., whether I’m playing or not; and it’s about four o’clock or half-past that I mostly see him.

“In winter my hands gets very cold indeed, so that I can scarcely feel the keys. Sometimes I can’t move them, and I have to leave off, and go down below and warm my hands at the cabin fire.

“In the summer I sometimes go out with a mate of mine, who plays the piccolo. He’s very clever indeed, and plays most extraordinary. He’s a little bigger than me. He lives by playing music in the boats. We don’t play in the streets. I never played in the streets in my life. He don’t play in the winter, but works with his father, who makes hair-oil and that, and sends it out in the country. He’s a regular perfumer; and serves chandlers’ shops and that like.

“There’s a tune we play together called the ‘Camp at Chobham.’ It begins with my doing the bugle, and he answers it on his fife. Then we do it in the distance like. Then come all the different marches the soldiers march to. Some people are so fond of it, that when they see us they come up and ask us to give it them. It takes a good quarter of an hour to play it. When I’m with him, I earn about the same as when I’m alone; but I like to go with him, because it’s company.

“One of the songs I play is, ‘Mother, is the battle over?’ That’s lately come out. It is a lady’s song, and they generally ask me for it. They also ask me for the Varsovienne. At the present time, the girls mostly ask me for ‘Polly, won’t you try me, oh!’ They like anything that is new, if it is a very pretty tune like ‘Polly, won’t you try me, oh!’ Sometimes I forget the tunes; they go right out of my head, and then, perhaps, a month afterwards they’ll come back again. Perhaps I’ll be fingering the keys, and I’ll accidental do the beginning of the air I’d forgot, and then I remember it all of a sudden the same as before. Then I feel quite glad that I’ve got it back again, and I’ll keep on playing it for a long time.

“When once I begin to play, I can scarcely leave off. I used at first to play as I went along the streets, but now I feel too tired to do it. If I haven’t been out in the boats, I must have a play just the same. I like it very much. I don’t like any of the other instruments, now I’ve learnt this one so well. The fiddle is pretty good, but nothing, to my fancy, like the concertina.

“The concertina I use now cost me 16s. It’s got twenty double keys—one when I pull the bellows out and one when I close it. I wear out an instrument in three months. The edges of the bellows get worn out: then I have to patch them up, till they get so weak that it mostly doubles over. It costs me about 1s. a-week to have them kept in order. They get out of tune very soon. They file them, and put fresh notes in. I get all my repairs done trade price. I tune my instrument myself. The old instruments I sell to the boys, for about as much as I give for a new one. They are very dear; but I get them so cheap when I buy them, I only give 16s. for a 25s. instrument.

“I’ve got a beautiful instrument at home, and I give a pound for it, and it’s worth two. Those I buy come from Germany, where they make them, and then they are took to this warehouse, where I buy them.

“Once I was turned off the penny steam-boats. There was such a lot of musicians come on board, and they got so cheeky, that when they was told not to play they would, just the same, and so a stop was put to all music on board. If one was stopped all must be stopped, so I was told not to go. I still had my fourpenny boats. I never used to go on the penny boats hardly, for I never used to get much money in them. Now I am allowed go on them just the same as before.

“I can’t say how often I’ve been up the Thames. I never go as far as Chelsea hardly, only about twice a-day, for most of the people get out between London-bridge and Nine-elms. My general run is down to Hungerford and back to Blackfriars; and I do that about fifty times a-day.

“I never go out on the Sunday. I mostly go to a Sunday-school, and then take a walk. Father wants me to be a scholar: I can read and write. I’m a teacher at the Sunday-school, and make the children read their lessons. I know multiplication, and addition, and all them. I go to school every night at half-past six and come home at nine. Father makes me and my brother go to school every day, and we pay 1s. each a-week. It’s a very good school, and the master is very kind. There are about 30 night scholars and 50 day ones, besides about 20 girls. His daughter teaches the girls.

“At night when I leave school I go and play music three nights a-week at a ball. My brother goes with me. We go to a place in the Westminster-road on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. It’s a very nice ball-room, and there are generally about 200 there. They pay 1s. each. There are four musicians, a fiddle, a harp, a fife, and a concertina. It isn’t a Casino; it’s an assembly-rooms. We teaches on three nights in the week, and the pupils assemble and practise on the other nights.

“The room is like a street almost, and the music sounds well in it. The other three play from notes, and I join in. I learnt their airs this way. My mother and father were very fond of dancing, and they used to go there nearly every night, and I’d go along with them, and then I’d listen and learn the tunes. My brother regularly played there. He was about ten years old when he first went to play there; but he could play any music that was put before him. In the daytime he blows the bellows at a blacksmith and engineer’s. The first time I played in a orchestra I felt a little strange. I had been to rehearsal. I went twenty times before I was confident enough to appear at night. I could play the tunes well enough, but I didn’t know when to leave off at the exact time they did. At last I learnt how to do it. I don’t have any stand before me. I never look at any of the others’ music. I look at the dancing. You’ve got to look at the time they’re dancing at, and watch their figures when they leave off. The proprietor knew father, and that’s how I came to have the job. I get 2s. 6d. a-night for playing there, and plenty to eat and drink. There’s bread and cheese and a drop of beer. On the other three nights when I’m not at the ball I stop at home, and get a bit of rest. Father sends us to bed early, about half-past nine, when I come home from school. On ball-nights I’m sometimes up to two o’clock in the morning.

“I take all the money I earn home to father, and he gives me a few halfpence for myself. All the year round it comes to 5s. a-day. I buy my own food when I’m out on the boats. I go to a cookshop. I like pudding or pie better than anything, and next to that I like a bit of bread and butter as well as anything, except pie. I have meat or veal pies. They charge you 6d. a-plate, and you have potatoes and all. After that I have a couple of pen’orth of pudding with sugar. I drink water. My dinner comes to about 9d. a-day, for I generally have a pen’orth of apples as dessert. It makes you very hungry going about in the steam-boats—very much so.

“I’m the only boy that goes about the steam-boats with a concertina; indeed, I’m the only boy above-bridge that goes about with music at all on the boats. I know the old gentleman who plays the harp at the Essex pier. I often go and join in with him when I land there, and we go shares. He mostly plays there of a morning, and we mostly of an afternoon. We two are the only ones that play on the piers.”

Within the last few years East Indians playing on the tom-tom have occasionally made their appearance in the London streets. The Indian or Lascar crossing-sweepers, who earned their living by alternately plying the broom and sitting as models to artists—the Indian converted to Christianity, who, in his calico clothes, with his brown bosom showing, was seen, particularly on cold days, crouching on the pavement and selling tracts, have lately disappeared from our highways, and in their stead the tom-tom players have made their appearance.

I saw two of these performers in one of the West-end streets, creeping slowly down the centre of the road, and beating their drums with their hands, whilst they drawled out a kind of mournful song. Their mode of parading the streets is to walk one following the other, beating their oyster-barrel-shaped drums with their hands, which they make flap about from the wrist like flounders out of water, whilst they continue their droning song, and halt at every twenty paces to look round.

One of these performers was a handsome lad, with a face such as I have seen in the drawings of the princes in the “Arabian Nights Entertainments.” He had a copper skin and long black hair, which he brushed behind his ears. On his head was a white turban, made to cock over one ear, like a hat worn on one side, and its rim stood out like the stopper to a scent-bottle.

The costume of the man greatly resembled that of a gentleman wearing his waistcoat outside his shirt, only the waistcoat was of green merino, and adorned with silk embroidery, his waist being bound in with a scarf. Linen trowsers and red knitted cuffs, to keep his wrists warm, completed his costume.

This man was as tall, slim, and straight, and as gracefully proportioned, as a bronze image. His face had a serious, melancholy look, which seemed to work strongly on the feelings of the nurses and the servant-girls who stopped to look at him. His companion, although dressed in the same costume, (the only difference being that the colour of his waistcoat was red instead of green,) formed a comical contrast to his sentimental Othello-looking partner, for he was what a Yankee would call “a rank nigger.” His face, indeed, was as black and elastic-looking as a printer’s dabber.

The name of the negro boy was Peter. Beyond “Yes” and “No,” he appeared to be perfectly unacquainted with the English language. His Othello friend was 17 years of age, and spoke English perfectly. I could not help taking great interest in this lad, both from the peculiarity of his conversation, which turned chiefly upon the obedience due from children to their parents, and was almost fanatical in its theory of perfect submission, and also from his singularly handsome countenance; for his eyes were almond-shaped, and as black as elder-berries, whilst, as he spoke, the nostrils of his aquiline nose beat like a pulse.

When I attempted to repeat after them one of their Indian songs, they both burst out into uproarious merriment. Peter rolling about in his chair like a serenader playing “the bones,” and the young Othello laughing as if he was being tickled.

In speaking of the duties which they owed to their parents, the rules of conduct which they laid down as those to be followed by a good son were wonderful for the completeness of the obedience which they held should be paid to a father’s commands. They did not seem to consider that the injunctions of a mother should be looked upon as sacredly as those of the male parent. They told me that the soul of the child was damned if even he disputed to obey the father’s command, although he knew it to be wrong, and contrary to God’s laws. “Allah,” they said, would visit any wickedness that was committed through such obedience upon the father, but he would bless the child for his submission. Their story was as follows:—

“Most of the tom-tom players are Indians, but we are both of us Arabs. The Arabs are just equally as good as the Indians at playing the tom-tom, but they haven’t got exactly to the learning of the manufacture of them yet. I come from Mocha, and so does Peter, my companion; only his father belongs to what we call the Abshee tribe, and that’s what makes him so much darker than what I am. The Abshee tribe are now outside of Arabia, up by the Gulf of Persia. They are much the same as the Mucdad people,—it’s all the same tribe like.

“My name is Usef Asman, and my father has been over here twelve years now. He came here in the English army, I’ve heard him say, for he was in the 77th Bengal Native Infantry; but he wasn’t an Indian, but enlisted in the service and fought through the Sikh war, and was wounded. He hasn’t got a pension, for he sent his luggage through Paris to England, and he lost his writings. The East India Company only told him that he must wait until they heard from India, and that’s been going on for now six years.

“Mother came home with father and me, and two brothers and a sister. I’m the second eldest. My brother is thirty-six, and he was in the Crimea, as steward on board the Royal Hydaspes, a steam screw she is. He was 17 and I was 6 years old when I came over. My brother is a fine strapping fellow, over six feet high, and the muscles in his arms are as big round as my thigh.

“I don’t remember my native country, but Peter does, for he’s only been here for two years and five months. He likes his own country better than England. His father left Arabia to go to Bombay, and there he keeps large coffee-shops. He’s worth a little money. His shops are in the low quarter of the town, just the same as Drury Lane may be, though it’s the centre of the town. They call the place the Nacopoora taleemoulla.

“Before father went into the army he was an interpreter in Arabia. His father was a horse-dealer. My father can speak eight or nine different languages fluently, besides a little of others. He was the interpreter who got Dr. Woolfe out of Bokhara prison, when he was put in because they thought he was a spy. Father was sent for by the chief to explain what this man’s business was. It is the Mogul language they speak there. My father was told to get him out of the country in twenty-four hours, and my father killed his own horse and camel walking so hard to get him away.

“We was obliged to put ourselves up to going about the streets. Duty and necessity first compelled me to do it. Father couldn’t get his pension, and, of course, we couldn’t sit at home and starve; so father was obliged to go out and play the drum. He got his tom-toms from an Arab vessel which came over, and they made them a present to him.

“We used before now, father and myself, to go to artists or modelers, to have our likenesses taken. We went to Mr. Armitage, when he was painting a battle in India. If you recollect, I’m leaning down by the rocks, whilst the others are escaping. I’ve also been to Mr. Dobson, who used to live in Newman-street. I’ve sat to him in my costume for several pictures. In one of them I was like a chief’s son, or something of that, smoking a hubble-bubble. Father used to have a deal of work at Mr. Gale’s, in Fitzroy-square. I don’t know the subjects he painted, for I wasn’t there whilst father used to sit. It used to tire me when I had to sit for two or three hours in one position. Sometimes I had to strip to the waist. I had to do that at Mr. Dobson’s in the winter time, and, though there was a good fire in the room, it was very wide, and it didn’t throw much heat out, and I used to be very cold. He used to paint religious subjects. I had a shilling an hour, and if a person could get after-work at it, I could make a better living at it than in the streets; in fact, I’d rather do it any time, though it’s harder work, for there is a name for that, but there is no name for going about playing the tom-tom; yet it’s better to do that than sit down and see other people starving.

“Father is still sitting to artists. He doesn’t go about the streets—he couldn’t face it out.

“It’s about eight years ago since father got the tom-toms. They are very good ones, and one of them is reckoned the best in England. They are made out of mango tree. It grows just the same as the bamboo tree; and they take a joint of it, and take out the pith—for it’s pithy inside, just like elderberry wood, with the outside hard. Father had these tom-toms for a month before we went out with them.

“The first day father went out with me, and kept on until he got employ; and then I went out by myself. I was about for four years by myself, along with sister; and then I went with Peter; and now we go out together. My sister was only about seven years old when she first went out, and she used to sing. She was dressed in a costume with a short jacket, with a tight waistcoat, and white trowsers. She had a turban and a sash.

“When we first went out we done very well. We took 6, 7, or 8s. a-day. We was the first to appear with it; indeed there’s only me and my cousin and another man that does it now. Peter is my cousin. His real name is Busha, but we call him Peter, because it’s more a proper name like, because several people can call him that when they can’t Busha. We are all turned Christians; we go to school every Sunday, in Great Queen-street, Lincoln’s Inn, and always to chapel. They are joined together.

“I and Peter take now, on a fine day in summer-time, generally 5 or 6s., but coming on winter as it does now it’s as much as we can do to take 2s. or 3s. Sometimes in winter we don’t take more than 1s. 6d., and sometimes 1s. Take the year round it would come, I should think, to 3s. a-day. On wet days we can’t do nothing.

“We were forced to become Christians when we came here. Of course a true Mussulman won’t take anything to eat that has been touched by other people’s hands. We were forced to break caste. The beasts were slaughtered by other people, and we wanted meat to eat. The bread, too, was made by Christians. The school-teachers used to come to father. We remained as Mussulmen as long as we could, but when winter came on, and we had no money, we was obliged to eat food from other people’s hands.

“Persons wouldn’t believe it, but little family as we are it takes 4s. a-day to keep us. Yet mother speaks English well. I’m sure father doesn’t go out and drink not half-a pint a beer of a night, but always waits till we come home, and then our 3s. or 4s. go to get bread and rice and that, and we have a pot of beer between us.

“Peter’s father married my father’s sister, that’s how we are cousins. He came over by ship to see us. He sent a message before to say that he was coming to see his uncle, and he expected to go back by the same ship, but he was used so cruelly on board that he preferred staying with us until we can all return together. Because he couldn’t understand English and his duty, and coming into a cold country and all, he couldn’t do his work, and they flogged him. Besides, they had to summon the captain to get their rights. He very much wants to get back to India to his father, and our family wants to get back to Mocha. I’ve forgot my Arabic, and only talk Hindostanee. I did speak French very fluently, but I’ve forgot it all except such things as Venez ici, or Voulez-vous danser? or such-like.

“When we are at home we mostly eat rice. It’s very cheap, and we like it better than anything else, because it fills our bellies better. It wouldn’t be no use putting a couple of half-quartern loaves before us two if we were hungry, for, thank God, we are very hearty-eating, both of us. Rice satisfies us better than bread. We mix curry-powder and a little meat or fish with it. If there’s any fish in season, such as fresh herrings or mackerel, we wash it and do it with onions, and mix it with the curry-powder, and then eat it with rice. Plaice is the only fish we don’t use, for it makes the curry very watery. We wash the rice two or three times after looking over it to take out any dirt or stones, and then we boil it and let it boil about five minutes. Rice-water is very strengthening, and the Arabs drink a deal of it, because whenever it lays in the stomach it becomes solid. It turns, when cold, as thick as starch, and with some salt it’s not a bad thing.

“Our best places for playing the tom-tom is the West-end in summer-time, but in winter we goes round by Islington and Shoreditch, and such-like, for there’s no quality at home, and we have to depend on the tradespeople. Sometimes we very often happen to meet with a gentleman—when the quality’s in town—who has been out in India, and can speak the language, and he will begin chatting with us and give us a shilling, or sometimes more. I’ve got two or three ladies who have taken a fancy to us, and they give me 6d. or 1s. whenever I go round. There’s one old lady and two or three young ones, at several houses in different places, who have such kindness for us. I was in place once with Captain Hines, and he was very kind to me. He had been out in India, and spoke the language very fluently. I didn’t leave him, he left me to go to the Crimea; and he told me he was very sorry, but he had a servant allowed him by the Government, and couldn’t take me.

“Some of the servant-girls are very kind to us, and give us a 1d. or 2d. We in general tries to amuse the people as much as we can. All the people are very fond of Peter, he makes them laugh; and the same people generally gives us money when we goes round again.

“When we are out we walk along side by side beating the tom-toms. We keep on singing different songs,—foreign ones to English tunes. The most favourite tune is what we calls in Hindostanee,—

‘Tasa bi tasa, no be no

Mutra bakooch, no arber go;

Tasa bi tasa, no be no

Attipa ho gora purgeen

Mara gora gora chelopageen.

Tasa bi tasa, no be no.

O senna key taho baroo

Dilla chungay gurrey kumahayroo.

Tasa bi tasa, no be no

Lutfellee karu basha bud

Shibbe de lum sesta bud

Tasa bi tasa, no be no.’

“This means:—

“‘I want something fresh (such as fish) in the value of nine. And after he went and bought these fresh goods he looked at them, and found them so good, that he was very pleased with them (‘mutra bakooch’ is pleased), that he says to his servant that he will give him leave to go about his business, because he’s made such a good bargain.’

“That’s all the meaning of that, sir, and we sing it to its original Indian tune. We sometimes sing Arab songs—one or two. They are very different, but we can’t explain them so well as we can the Hindostanee. They’re more melancholy, and towards the parents sentimental-like. There’s one song they sing in Arabia, that it puts them in that way they don’t know what they are doing of. They begin the song, and then they bend the body about and beat their knees, and keep on so until they tumble off their chairs. They nearly strangle themselves sometimes. It’s about love to their parents, and as if they left them and went far away. It’s a sort of a cutting song, and very sentimental. There’s always a man standing in one corner, looking after those singing, and when he sees them get into a way, he reads a book and comes and rouses them. He’s a kind of magician-like. Father sings it, and I know a verse or two of it. I’ve seen father and another man singing it, and they kept on see-sawing about, and at last they both fell off the chair. We got a little water and sprinkled their faces, and hit them on the back very hard, and said, ‘Sallee a nabbee,’ which is just the same as ‘Rise, in the name of the Lord,’ and they came to instantly, and after they got up was very calm—ah, very tame afterwards!

“The tom-tom hasn’t got much music in it beyond beating like a drum. There are first-rate players in India, and they can make the tom-tom speak in the same way as if you was to ask a gentleman, ‘How do you do?’ and they’ll answer you, ‘Very well, thank you.’ They only go to the feasts, which are called ‘madggeless,’ and then the noblemen, after hearing them, will give them great sums of money as a handsome present. The girls, too, dance to the tom-tom in India. Peter is a very good player, and he can make the tom-tom to answer. One side of the drum asks the question, that is the treble side, and the bass one answers it, for in a tom-tom each end gives a different note.

“Father makes all our clothes for us. We wear flannel under our shirts, which a lady made me a present of, or else we never used to wear them before. All through that sharp winter we never used to wear anything but our dress. All the Arab boys are brought up to respect their parents. If they don’t they will be punished. For myself, I always obey mine. My father has often called shame on the laws of this country, to hear the children abusing their parents. In our country, if a son disobeys his father’s command, he may, even though the child be as tall as a giant, take up his sword and kill him. My brother, who is on board ship, even though he has learnt the laws of this country, always obeys my father. One night he wouldn’t mind what was said, so my father goes up and hit him a side slap on the chops, and my brother turned the other cheek to him, and said in Arabic, ‘Father, hit this cheek, too; I have done wrong.’ He was about 30 then. Father said he hoped he’d never disobey his orders again.

“The Arabs are very clean. In our country we bathe three times a-day; but over here we only go to the bath in Endell-street (a public one) twice a-week. We always put on clean things three times a-week.

“There’s a knack in twisting the turban. A regular Arab always makes the rim bind over the right ear, like Peter’s. It don’t take more than five minutes to put the turban on. We do it up in a roll, and have nothing inside it to stiffen it. Some turbans have 30 yards in them, all silk, but mine is only 3½ yards, and is calico. The Arab waistcoat always has a pocket on each side of the breast, with a lengthways opening, and a bit of braid round the edge of the stuff, ending where the waist is, so that the flaps are not bound.

“The police are very kind to us, and never interfere with us unless there is somebody ill, and we are not aware of it. The tom-tom makes a very humming sound, and is heard to a great distance.”

A very handsome man, swarthy even for a native of Bengal, with his black glossy hair most picturesquely disposed, alike on his head and in his whiskers and moustache, gave me, after an Oriental salute, the following statement. His teeth were exquisitely white, and his laugh or smile lighted up his countenance to an expression of great intelligence. His dress was a garb of dark-brown cloth, fitting close to his body and extending to his knee. His trowsers were of the same coloured cloth, and he wore a girdle of black and white cotton round his waist. He was accompanied by his son, (whom he sometimes addressed in Hindoostanee), a round-faced boy, with large bright black eyes and rosy cheeks. The father said:—

“I was born in Calcutta, and was Mussulman—my parents was Mussulman—but I Christian now. I have been in dis contree ten year. I come first as servant to military officer, an Englishman. I lived wit him in Scotland six, seven mont. He left Scotland, saying he come back, but he not, and in a mont I hear he dead, and den I com London. London is very great place, and Indian city little if you look upon London. I use tink it plenty pleasure look upon London as de great government place, but now I look upon London, and it is plenty bad pleasure. I wish very often return to my own contree, where everyting sheap—living sheap, rice sheap. I suffer from climate in dis contree. I suffer dis winter more dan ever I did. I have no flannels, no drawer, no waistcoat, and have cold upon my chest. It is now near five year I come London. I try get service, but no get service. I have character, but not from my last master. He could not give me; he dead ven I want it. I put up many insult in dis contree. I struck sometime in street. Magistrate punish man gave me blow dat left mark on my chin here. Gentlemen sometime save me from harm, sometime not. De boys call me black dis or de oder. Wen I get no service, I not live, and I not beg in street, so I buy tom-tom for 10s. De man want 30s. De 10s. my last money left, and I start to play in streets for daily bread. I beat tom-tom, and sing song about greatness of God, in my own language. I had den wife, Englishwoman, and dis little boy. I done pretty well first wid tom-tom, but it is very bad to do it now. Wen I began first, I make 3s., 4s., 5s., or 6s. a-day. It was someting new den, but nine or ten monts it was someting old, and I took less and less, until now I hardly get piece of bread. I sometime get few shilling from two or three picture-men, who draw me. It is call model. Anyting for honest bread. I must not be proud. I cannot make above 6s. a-week of tom-tom in street. Dare is, well as I know, about fifty of my contreemen playing and begging in streets of London. Dose who sweep crossing are Malay, some Bengal. Many are impostor, and spoil ’spectable men. My contreemen live in lodging-house; often many are plenty blackguard lodging-houses, and dere respectable man is always insult. I have room for myself dis tree mont, and cost me tree shilling and sixpennies a-week; it is not own furniture; dey burn my coke, coal, and candle too. My wife would make work wid needle, but dere is no work for her, poor ting. She servant when I marry her. De little boy make jump in my contree’s way wen I play tom-tom—he too little to dance—he six year. Most of my contreemen in street have come as Lascar, and not go back for bosen and bosen-mate, and flog. So dey stay for beg, or sweep, or anyting. Dey are never pickpocket dat I ever hear of.”

A stout, reddish-faced man, who was familiar with all kinds of exhibitions, and had the coaxing, deferential manner of many persons who ply for money in the streets, gave me an account of what he called “his experience” as the “drum and pipes:”—

“I have played the pandean pipes and the drum for thirty years to street exhibitions of all kinds. I was a smith when a boy, serving seven years’ apprenticeship; but after that I married a young woman that I fell in love with, in the music line. She played a hurdy-gurdy in the streets, so I bought pandean pipes, as I was always fond of practising music, and I joined her. Times for street-musicianers were good then, but I was foolish. I’m aware of that now; but I wasn’t particularly partial to hard work; besides, I could make more as a street-musicianer. When I first started, my wife and I joined a fantoccini. It did well. My wife and I made from 9s. to 10s. a-day. We had half the profits. At that time the public exhibitions were different to what they are now. Gentlemen’s houses were good then, but now the profession’s sunk to street corners. Bear-dancing was in vogue then, and clock-work on the round board, and Jack-i’-the-green was in all his glory every May, thirty years ago. Things is now very dead indeed. In the old times, only sweeps were allowed to take part with the Jack; they were particular at that time; all were sweeps but the musicianers. Now it’s everybody’s money, when there’s any money. Every sweep showed his plate then when performing. ‘My lady’ was anybody at all likely that they could get hold of; she was generally a watercress-seller, or something in the public way. ‘My lady’ had 2s. 6d. a-day and her keep for three days—that was the general hire. The boys, who were climbing-boys, had 1s. or 6d., or what the master gave them; and they generally went to the play of a night, after washing themselves, in course. I had 6s. a-day and a good dinner—shoulder of mutton, or something prime—and enough to drink. ‘My lord’ and the other characters shared and shared alike. They have taken, to my knowledge, 5l. on the 1st of May. This year, one set, with two ‘My ladies,’ took 3l. the first day. The master of the lot was a teetotaler, but the others drank as they liked. He turned teetotaler because drink always led him into trouble. The dress of the Jack is real ivy tied round hoops. The sweeps gather the ivy in the country, and make the dresses at their homes. My lord’s and the other dresses are generally kept by the sweeps. My lord’s dress costs a mere trifle at the second-hand clothes shop, but it’s gold-papered and ornamented up to the mark required. What I may call war tunes, such as ‘The White Cockade,’ the ‘Downfall of Paris,’ (I’ve been asked for that five or six times a-day—I don’t remember the composer), ‘Bonaparte’s March,’ and the ‘Duke of York’s March,’ were in vogue in the old times. So was ‘Scots wha hae’ (very much), and ‘Off she goes!’ Now new tunes come up every day. I play waltzes and pokers now chiefly. They’re not to compare to the old tunes; it’s like playing at musicianers, lots of the tunes now-a-days. I’ve played with Michael, the Italy Bear. I’ve played the fife and tabor with him. The tabor was a little drum about the size of my cap, and it was tapped with a little stick. There are no tabors about now. I made my 7s. or 8s. a-day with Michael. He spoke broken English. A dromedary was about then, but I knew nothing of that or the people; they was all foreigners together. Swinging monkeys were in vogue at that time as well. I was with them, with Antonio of Saffron Hill. He was the original of the swinging monkeys, twenty years ago. They swing from a rope, just like slack-wire dancers. Antonio made money and went back to his own country. He sold his monkeys,—there was three of them,—small animals they were, for 70l. to another foreigner; but I don’t know what became of them. Coarse jokes pleased people long ago, but don’t now; people get more enlightened, and think more of chapel and church instead of amusements. My trade is a bad one now. Take the year through, I may make 12s. a-week, or not so much; say 10s. I go out sometimes playing single,—that’s by myself,—on the drum and pipes; but it’s thought nothing of, for I’m not a German. It’s the same at Brighton as in London; brass bands is all the go when they’ve Germans to play them. The Germans will work at 2s. a-day at any fair, when an Englishman will expect 6s. The foreigners ruin this country, for they have more privileges than the English. The Germans pull the bells and knock at the doors for money, which an Englishman has hardly face for. I’m now with a fantoccini figures from Canton, brought over by a seaman. I can’t form an exact notion of how many men there are in town who are musicianers to the street exhibitions; besides the exhibitions’ own people, I should say about one hundred. I don’t think that they are more drunken than other people, but they’re liable to get top-heavy at times. None that I know live with women of the town. They live in lodgings, and not in lodging-houses. Oh! no, no, we’ve not come to that yet. Some of them succeeded their fathers as street-musicianers; others took it up casalty-like, by having learned different instruments; none that I know were ever theatrical performers. All the men I know in my line would object, I am sure, to hard work, if it was with confinement along with it. We can never stand being confined to hard work, after being used to the freedom of the streets. None of us save money; it goes either in a lump, if we get a lump, or in dribs and drabs, which is the way it mostly comes to us. I’ve known several in my way who have died in St. Giles’s workhouse. In old age or sickness we’ve nothing but the parish to look to. The newest thing I know of is the singing dogs. I was with that as musician, and it answers pretty well amongst the quality. The dogs is three Tobies to a Punch-and-Judy show, and they sing,—that is, they make a noise,—it’s really a howl,—but they keep time with Mr. Punch as he sings.”

III.—STREET VOCALISTS. — Street Negro Serenaders. — Statement of another Ethiopian Serenader. — Street Glee-Singers. — Street Ballad-Singers, or Chaunters. — The Whistling Man. — Whistling and Dancing Boy. — “ Whistling Billy.

The Street Vocalists are almost as large a body as the street musicians. It will be seen that there are 50 Ethiopian serenaders, and above 250 who live by ballad-singing alone.

At present I shall deal with the Ethiopian serenaders, and the better class of ballad-singers. Two young men who are of the former class gave the following account. Both were dressed like decent mechanics, with perfectly clean faces, excepting a little of the professional black at the root of the hair on the forehead:—

ETHIOPIAN SERENADERS.

[From a Photograph.]

“We are niggers,” said one man, “as it’s commonly called; that is, negro melodists. Nigger bands vary from four to seven, and have numbered as many as nine; our band is now six. We all share alike. I (said the same man) was the first who started the niggers in the streets, abour four years ago. I took the hint from the performance of Pell and the others at the St. James’s. When I first started in the streets I had five performers, four and myself. There were the banjo-player, the bones, fiddle, and tambourine. We are regularly full-dressed, in fashionable black coats and trowsers, open white waistcoats, pumps (bluchers some had, just as they could spring them), and wigs to imitate the real negro head of hair. Large white wrists or cuffs came out after. It was rather a venturesome ’spec, the street niggers, for I had to find all the clothes at first start, as I set the school a-going. Perhaps it cost me 6s. a-head all round—all second-hand dress except the wigs, and each man made his own wig out of horse-hair dyed black, and sewn with black thread on to the skin of an old silk hat. Well, we first started at the top of the Liverpool-road, but it was no great success, as we weren’t quite up in our parts and didn’t play exactly into one another’s hands. None of us were perfect, we’d had so few rehearsals. One of us had been a street singer before, another a street fiddler, another had sung nigger-songs in public-houses, the fourth was a mud-lark, and I had been a street singer. I was brought up to no trade regularly. When my father died I was left on the world, and I worked in Marylebone stone-yard, and afterwards sung about the streets, or shifted as I could. I first sung in the streets just before the Queen’s coronation—and a hard life it was. But, to tell the truth, I didn’t like the thoughts of hard labour—bringing a man in so little, too—that’s where it is; and as soon as I could make any sort of living in the streets with singing and such-like, I got to like it. The first ‘debew,’ as I may say, of the niggers, brought us in about 10s. among us, besides paying for our dinner and a pint of beer a-piece. We were forced to be steady you see, sir, as we didn’t know how it would answer. We sang from eleven in the morning till half-past ten at night, summer time. We kept on day after day, not rehearsing, but practising in the streets, for rehearsing in private was of little use—voices are as different in private rooms and the public streets as is chalk from cheese. We got more confidence as we went along. To be sure we had all cheek enough to start with, but this was a fresh line of business. Times mended as we got better at our work. Last year was the best year I’ve known. We start generally about ten, and play till it’s dark in fine weather. We averaged 1l. a-week last year. The evenings are the best time. Regent-street, and Oxford-street, and the greater part of St. James’s, are our best places. The gentry are our best customers, but we get more from gentlemen than from ladies. The City is good, I fancy, but they won’t let us work it; it’s only the lower parts, Whitechapel and Smithfield ways, that we have a chance in. Business and nigger-songs don’t go well together. The first four days of the week are pretty much alike for our business. Friday is bad, and so is Saturday, until night comes, and we then get money from the working people. The markets, such as Cleveland-street, Fitzroy-square (Tottenham-court-road’s no good at any time). Carnaby-market, Newport-market, Great Marylebone-street, and the Edgeware-road, are good Saturday nights. Oxford-street is middling. The New-cut is as bad a place as can be. When we started, the songs we knew was ‘Old Mr. Coon,’ ‘Buffalo Gals,’ ‘Going ober de Mountain,’ ‘Dandy Jim of Carolina,’ ‘Rowly Boly O,’ and ‘Old Johnny Booker.’ We stuck to them a twelvemonth. The ‘Buffalo Gals’ was best liked. The ‘bones’—we’ve real bones, rib-of-beef bones, but some have ebony bones, which sound better than rib-bones—they tell best in ‘Going ober de Mountain,’ for there’s a symphony between every line. It’s rather difficult to play the bones well; it requires hard practice, and it brings the skin off; and some men have tried it, but with so little success that they broke their bones and flung them away. The banjo is the hardest to learn of the lot. We have kept changing our songs all along; but some of the old ones are still sung. The other favourites are, or were, ‘Lucy Neale,’ ‘O, Susannah,’ ‘Uncle Ned,’ ‘Stop dat Knocking,’ ‘Ginger Blue,’ and ‘Black-eyed Susannah.’ Things are not so good as they were. We can average 1l. a-piece now in the week, but it’s summer-time, and we can’t make that in bad weather. Then there’s so many of us. There’s the Somer’s-town ‘mob’ now in London; the King-street, the four St. Giles’s mobs, the East-end (but they’re white niggers), the two Westminster mobs, the Marylebone, and the Whitechapel. We interfere with one another’s beats sometimes, for we have no arrangement with each other, only we don’t pitch near the others when they’re at work. The ten mobs now in London will have 50 men in them at least; and there’s plenty of stragglers, who are not regular niggers: there’s so many dodges now to pick up a living, sir. The Marylebone and Whitechapel lots play at nights in penny theatres. I have played in the Haymarket in ‘the New Planet,’ but there’s no demand for us now at the theatres, except such as the Pavilion. There are all sorts of characters in the different schools, but I don’t know any runaway gentleman, or any gentleman of any kind among us, not one; we’re more of a poorer sort, if not to say a ragged sort, for some are without shoes or stockings. The ‘niggers’ that I know have been errand-boys, street-singers, turf-cutters, coalheavers, chandlers, paviours, mud-larks, tailors, shoemakers, tinmen, bricklayers’ labourers, and people who have had no line in particular but their wits. I know of no connexion with pickpockets, and don’t believe there is any, though pickpockets go round the mobs; but the police fling it in our teeth that we’re connected with pickpockets. It’s a great injury to us is such a notion. A good many of the niggers—both of us here likes a little drop—drink as hard as they can, and a good many of them live with women of the town. A few are married. Some niggers are Irish. There’s Scotch niggers, too. I don’t know a Welsh one, but one of the street nigger-singers is a real black—an African.”

“It must be eight years ago,” he commenced, “since the Ethiopian serenading come up—aye, it must be at least that time, because the twopenny boats was then running to London-bridge, and it was before the ‘Cricket’ was blown up. I know that, because we used to work the boats serenading. I used to wear a yellow waistcoat, in imitation of them at the St. James’s Theatre.

“The first came out at St. James’s Theatre, and they made a deal of money. There were five of them—Pell was bones, Harrington was concertina, I think, White was violin, Stanwood the banjo, and Germain the tambourine. I think that’s how it was, but I can easy ascertain. After them sprang up the ‘Lantum Serenaders’ and the ‘Ohio Serenaders,’ the ‘South Carolina Serenaders,’ the ‘Kentucky Minstrels,’ and many other schools of them; but Pell’s gang was at the top of the tree. Juba was along with Pell. Juba was a first class—a regular A 1—he was a regular black, and a splendid dancer in boots.

“As soon as I could get in to vamp the tunes on the banjo a little, I went at it, too. I wasn’t long behind them, you may take your oath. We judged it would be a hit, and it was fine. We got more money at it then than we do at any game now. First of all we formed a school of three—two banjos and a tambourine, and after that we added a bones and a fiddle. We used to dress up just the same then as now. We’d black our faces, and get hold of a white hat, and put a black band round it, or have big straw hats and high collars up to the ears. We did uncommonly well. The boys would follow us for miles, and were as good as advertisements, for they’d shout, ‘Here’s the blacks!’ as if they was trumpeting us. The first songs we came out with were ‘Old Joe,’ ‘Dan Tucker,’ and ‘Going ober de Mountain,’ and ‘O come along, you sandy boys.’ Our opening chorus was ‘The Wild Racoon Track,’ and we finished up with the ‘Railway Overture,’ and it was more like the railway than music, for it was all thumping and whistling, for nobody knowed how to play the banjo then.

“When I went out pitching first I could sing a good song; but it has ruined my voice now, for I used to sing at the top—tenor is the professional term.

“It wasn’t everybody as could be a nigger then. We was thought angels then. It’s got common now, but still I’ve no hesitation in saying that, keep steady and sober, and it works well to the present day. You can go and get a good average living now.

“We could then, after our ‘mungare’ and ‘buvare’ (that’s what we call eat and drink, and I think it’s broken Italian), carry home our 5s. or 6s. each, easy. We made long days, and did no night-work. Besides, we was always very indifferent at our business, indeed. I’d be blowed if I’d trust myself out singing as I did then: we should get murdered. It was a new thing, and people thought our blunders was intended. We used to use blacking then to do our faces—we got Messrs. Day and Martin to do our complexion then. Burnt cork and beer wasn’t so popular then.

“I continued at the nigger business ever since. I and my mate have been out together, and we’ve gone out two, and three, or four, up to eleven in a school, and we’ve shared better when eleven than when we was two. The highest we’ve got in a day has been 1l. 6s. each, at the Portsmouth review, when Napier went out with the fleet, above two years ago. We walked down to Portsmouth a-purpose. We got 14s. 6d. each—and there was five of us—at the launch of the ‘Albert.’

“The general dress of the nigger is a old white hat and a long-tailed coat; or sometimes, when we first come out, in white waistcoats and coats; or even in striped shirts and wigs, and no hats at all. It’s all according to fancy and fashion, and what takes.

“When we go to a cheap concert-room, such as the Albion, Ratcliffe-highway, or the Ship and Camel, Bermondsey, our usual business is to open with a chorus, such as ‘Happy are we,’ though, perhaps, we haven’t had a bit of grub all day, and been as wretched as possible; and then we do a song or two, and then ‘crack a wid,’ as we say, that is, tell an anecdote, such as this:—

“Three old niggers went to sea on a paving-stone. The first never had any legs, the next never had any arms, and the other was strip stark naked. So the one without any legs said, ‘I see de bird;’ so the one without any arms took up a gun and shot it, and the one without any legs run after it, and the one that was strip stark naked put it in his pocket. Now, you tell me what pocket that was?

“Then another says, ‘In his wainscoat pocket.’ Then I return, ‘How can he if he was naked? Can you give the inflammation of that story? Do you give it up?’ Then he says, ‘No, won’t give it up.’ Then I say, ‘Would you give it up if you had it.’ Then he says, ‘Yes!’ and I reply, ‘The inflammation of that is the biggest lie that ebber was told.’

“Sometimes we do conundrums between the songs. I ask, ‘Can you tell me how to spell blind pig in two letters?’ and then he, remembering the first story, answers, ‘Yes, the biggest lie that ebber was told.’ ‘No, that’s not it.’ Then I continue, ‘P, g; and if you leave the i out it must be a blind pig, Jim.’

“Then we go on with the concert, and sing perhaps, ‘Going ober de Mountain’ and ‘Mary Blane,’ and then I ask such conundrums as these:

“‘Why is mahogany like flannel?’ ‘Because they are both used to manufacture into drawers;’ and then we do this rhyme, ‘Because mahogany makes drawers to put your clothes in, and flannel makes drawers to put your toes in.’

“Perhaps we do another conundrum, such as this:—‘Supposing you nigger was dead, what would be the best time to bury you?’ One says, ‘I shan’t suppose.’ Another says, ‘I don’t know.’ And then I say, ‘Why, the latter end of the summer;’ and one asks, ‘Why, Jim?’ ‘Because it’s the best time for blackberrying.’ Then I cry out, ‘Now, you niggers, go on with the consort;’ and one of them will add, ‘Now, Jim, we’ll have that lemoncholy song of Dinah Clare, that poor girl that fell in the water-butt and got burnt to death.’

“Another of our dialogues is this one:—‘Did I ebber tell you about that lemoncholy occurrence, Mary Blane, the young girl that died last night in the house that was burned down this morning, and she’s gone to live in a garret?’ ‘I shall call and see her.’ ‘You can’t.’ ‘’Cos why?’ ‘’Cos she moved from where she lives now; she’s gone to live where she used to come from.’ ‘Did you ever see her broder Bill?’ ‘No; he’s dead.’ ‘What! broder Bill dead, too?’ ‘Yes; I seed him this morning, and axed him how he was.’ ‘Well, and what did he told you?’ ‘He told me he was wery well, thankye, and he was going to lib along with Dinah; and he’d only been married three weeks.’ So I asked him how many children he’d got. He said he’d only got one. So I said, ‘Dere something very dark about that, and I don’t think all goes right, if you was to have a son in three weeks.’ So he said, ‘Look you here, sir; if the world was made in six days, it’s debblish hard if we can’t make a son in three weeks.’ ‘Go on with the consort.’

“Another of our dialogues is this:—‘Did I ever tell you, Jim, about my going out a-riding?’ ‘Neber.’ ‘Well, then, I’ll told you, I had two dollars in my pocket.’ ‘Had you?’ ‘And I thought I’d do it gentleman-tell-like.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘So I went to the libery dealer.’ ‘Who?’ ‘The libery dealer—the man that keeps the horses’ stable.’ ‘Oh! golly! you mean the stable-man.’ ‘Yas. Well, I axed him if he could lend me a horse to ride on; so he said, he’d only got one horse.’ ‘Wall?’ ‘And that was a grey mare. I thought that would do just as well.’ ‘Of course.’ ‘And I axed him what that would cost me? and he said he should charge me two dollars for that—so I paid the two dollars.’ ‘Wall?’ ‘And he put me the spurs on my boots, and he put de bridle on the horse’s back.’ ‘The bridle on the horse’s back!—what did he do with the bit?’ ‘He neber had a bit at all; he put the stirrups in the mouth.’ ‘Now stop—you mean, he put the saddle on the back, and the bridle in the mouth.’ ‘I know it was something. Den they put me on the saddle, and my feet on the bridle.’ ‘You mean he put your foot in the stirrups.’ ‘So I went out very well.’ ‘So the mare begun for to gallop, so I caught hold of the turmel of the saddle.’ ‘The tummel!’ ‘Yes, Jim, the tummel.’ ‘No, no; you means the pummel.’ ‘Wall, hab it the pummel—you knows—but, but, I know, I’m right. So I caught hold of the mane, and I got on berry well till I come to a hill, when the mare began to gollop hard down the hill, because she was shy.’ ‘What was she shy at?’ ‘She saw a new-found-out-land dog crossing the wood.’ ‘A new-found-out-land dog crossing the road!’ ‘Yes; so I thought I’d try and stop her: so I stuck my knees into her side, and my spur into her, and by golly, she went too fast.’ ‘And did she now?’ ‘Till she falled down and broke her knees.’ ‘Poor thing!’ ‘Aye, and pitched poor nigger on his head; so I got up and tought I’d take the debil of a mare back to the stable. So when I got back I told the libbery man about it.’ ‘Yas, the stable-man.’ ‘And he said I must pay 2l. 10s.’ ‘What for?’ ‘For repairing the mare; so I said I wouldn’t; so he said he would take me before the court, and I said he might take me down the alley, if he liked; so I thought I had better go and insult a man ob de law about it. So I went to the man ob the law’s house and pulled at the servant, and out comed the bell.’ ‘No; you means pulled the bell, and out comed the servant. Wall?’ ‘I said, ‘Can you conform me is de man ob de law at home?’ so she told me he was out, but the man ob de law’s wife was at home, so down she come. So I said I wanted to insult the man ob de law, and she said, ‘Insult me; I do just as well.’ So she says, ‘Plane yourself.’ So I said, ‘Well, den, supposing you was a gray mare, and I hired you for two dollars to ride you, and you was rader rusty, and went too fast for me, and I wanted to stop you, and I stuck my knees in your side, and my spur into you, and you falled down and broke your knees, how could I help it?’ So she flung the door in my face and went in. So now go on with the consort.’

“Sometimes, when we are engaged for it, we go to concert-rooms and do the nigger-statues, which is the same as the tableaux vivants. We illustrate the adventures of Pompey, or the life of a negro slave. The first position is when he is in the sugar-brake, cutting the sugar cane. Then he is supposed to take it to be weighed, and not being weight, he is ordered to be flogged. My mate is then doing the orator and explaining the story. It’s as nice a bit of business as ever was done, and goes out-and-out. You see, it’s a new thing from the white ones. The next position is when he is being flogged, and then when he swears revenge upon the overseer, and afterwards when he murders the overseer. Then there’s the flight of Pompey, and so on, and I conclude with a variety of sculptures from the statues, such as the Archilles in Hyde-park, and so on. This is really good, and the finest bit of business out, and nobody does it but me; indeed it says in the bill—if you saw it—‘for which he stands unrivalled.’

“We sometimes have a greenhorn wants to go out pitching with us—a ‘mug,’ we calls them; and there’s a chap of the name of ‘Sparrow-back’, as we called him, because he always wore a bob-tailed coat, and was a rare swell; and he wished to go out with us, and we told him he must have his head shaved first, and Tom held him down while I shaved him, and I took every bit of hair off him. Then he underwent the operation of mugging him up with oil-colour paint, black, and not forgetting the lips, red. Ah, he carried the black marks on him for two months afterwards, and made a real washable nigger. We took him with us to Camberwell fair, and on the way he kept turning round and saying how strong he smelt of turps, and his face was stiff. Ah, he was a serenader! How we did scrub it into him with a stiff brush! When we washed at a horse-trough, coming home, he couldn’t get a bit of the colour off. It all dried round his nose and eyes.

“When we are out pitching, the finest place for us is where there is anybody sick. If we can see some straw on the ground, or any tan, then we stays. We are sure to play up where the blinds are down. When we have struck up, we rattle away at the banjos, and down will come the servant, saying, ‘You’re to move on; we don’t want you.’ Then I’ll pretend not to understand what she says, and I’ll say, ‘Mary Blane did you ask for? O yes, certainly, Miss;’ and off we’ll go into full chorus. We don’t move for less than a bob, for sixpence ain’t enough for a man that’s ill. We generally get our two shillings.

“Sometimes gents will come and engage us to go and serenade people, such as at weddings or anything of that sort. Occasionally young gents or students will get us to go to a house late in the morning, to rouse up somebody for a lark, and we have to beat away and chop at the strings till all the windows are thrown up. We had a sovereign given us for doing that.

“The Christmas time is very good for us, for we go out as waits, only we don’t black, but only sing; and that I believe—the singing, I mean—is, I believe, the original waits. With what we get for to play and to go away, and what we collect on boxing Monday, amounts to a tidy sum.

“There’s very few schools of niggers going about London now. I don’t think there are three schools pitching in the streets. There’s the Westminster school—they have kettle-drums and music-stands, and never sings; and there’s the New Kent-road gang, or Houghton’s mob, and that’s the best singing and playing school out; then a St. Giles’s lot, but they are dicky—not worth much. The Spitalfields school is broke up. Of course there are other niggers going about, but to the best of my calculation there ain’t more than 40 men scattered about.

“Houghton’s gang make the tour of the watering-places every year. I’ve been to Brighton with them, and we did pretty well there in the fine season, making sure of 30s. a-week a man; and it’s work that continues all the year round, for when it’s fine weather we do pitching, and when it’s wet we divide a school into parties of two, and go busking at the public-houses.”

---

The following comic dialogue was composed by the “professional” who was kind enough to favour me with his statement:—

“We are finishing a song, and after the song we generally do a sympathy, as we calls it (a symphony, you know); and when I’ve finished, Jim, my mate, keeps on beating the tambourine, as if he couldn’t leave off. Then I turn round to him and say, ‘By golly, if you don’t leave off, I’ll broke you over de jaw.’ He answers, ‘Go on, dig a hole and bury yourself.’ Then I say, ‘Why don’t you ’splain yourself properly.’ Then he keeps on playing still, and I say, ‘Can’t you leave off, nigger?’ and he replies, ‘I’m trying to broke my trowsers.’ Then he leaves off, and I say, ‘What de debil do you do dat for?’ and he says, ‘Because I belong to de boulding (building) society.’ Then I puts another question, and then begins this dialogue:—

“He says, ‘I’m going to sustire from dis profession.’ ‘What shall you do den?’ ‘I’m going to be a boulder.’ ‘Go along! what shall you build?’ ‘I’m going to be a boulder of trousers.’ ‘By golly, you shall bould me a pair den.’ ‘Well, den, how would you like dem made? would you like dem with high-pointed collars, full bozomed, and nice wristbands?’ ‘What, de trowsems?’ ‘Made of lining nor calico?’ ‘What! lining or calico trowsems?’ ‘No! shirt!’ ‘Why, you neber said a word about shirt!’ ‘By golly, you did though.’ ‘Well, den, bould me a shirt.’ ‘Well, den, how would yer like it? will you like it with nice square toes, and bilingtary heels?’ ‘What! bilingtary heels shirts?’ ‘With a row of hobnails?’ Then I turn round in a passion, and cry, ‘By golly, I can’t stand this! What! hobnails shirt?’ ‘No; I was talking about a pair of boots.’ ‘Now, you neber said a word about boots.’ ‘Oh yes, I did.’ Then I get into a passion, and afterwards say, ‘Well, bould me a pair of boots: now mind, you say a pair of boots.’ ‘Yes. Well, how would you like dem boulded? Newmarket cut, rolling collar, face of welwet?’ Then I say, aside, ‘What! rolling collar and faced with welwet boots?’ and he continues, ‘With pockets in de tail, and two row of gold buttons?’ ‘What! pockets in de tail, and two row of gold button boots? By golly, dat’s a coat.’ ‘Yes; didn’t you say a coat?’ ‘Neber spoke a word about coat in all my life. Did I?’ (that to the audience). ‘Yes, ob course yer did.’ Then I get into a passion again, but at last I say, ‘Well, den, bould me a coat.’ ‘Well, how would yer like it? with a nice high crown?’ Then I say, aside, ‘What! a high-crowned coat?’ ‘With a nice cork body, patent Paris nap, and silk lining, with a return-up rim?’ ‘What! turn-up rim coat? Golly, dat’s a hat!’ ‘Yas.’ ‘Neber spoked a work about a hat.’ ‘Oh, yer did now.’ Then I get excited again; but at last say, ‘Well, den, bould me a hat.’ ‘Well, den, how would you like it? Seben story high, with a nice green waterbutt behind, and de nice palings round the garden?’ ‘What! de palings round de garden of a hat?’ ‘No; I said de house.’ ‘By golly, you said hat!’ ‘No; I said de house.’ ‘By golly, you said hat!’ Then we get into a terrific passion, and he gets up and hits my tambourine, and say, ‘By golly, you said de house!’ and I get up and hit him with the banjo on the head, and cry, ‘By golly, you said a hat!’ Then, in the height of my excitement, I turn to the people, and ask, ‘Didn’t he say a hat?’ Of course they don’t answer, and I conclude I must have made a mistake, so I reply, ‘Well, den, bould me a house.’ ‘Well, den, how would you like it made? Of the best elm, with de inscription-plate on the lid, tree rows of nails, and handles at each side?’ ‘Well, by golly, dat’s a coffin!’ ‘Yas, Jim.’ ‘What do yer tink I wants a coffin for?’ ‘Why, because you gets in such a passion, I thought you’d going to die.’ Then I get sulky, and growl out, ‘Well, den, go on wid de consort.’”

An experienced street vocalist of the better kind, upon whose statements I satisfied myself that every reliance might be placed, described to me the present condition of his calling. He was accompanied by his wife.

“I have been in the profession of a vocalist,” he said, “for twenty-five years. Before that I was a concert-singer. I was not brought up to the profession; I was a shipping agent, but I married a concert-singer, and then followed the profession. I was young, and a little stage-struck,”—(“Rather,” said his wife, smiling, “he was struck with those who were on the stage”)—“and so I abandoned the ship-agency. I have tried my fortune on the stage as a singer, and can’t say but what I have succeeded. In fact, my wife and I have taken more than any two singers that have ever appeared in the humble way. We have been street vocalists for twenty-five years. We sing solos, duets, and glees, and only at night. When we started, the class of songs was very different to what it is now. We were styled ‘the Royal Glee-singers.’ ‘Cherry ripe,’ ‘Meet me by moonlight,’ ‘Sweet home,’ were popular then. Haynes Bailey’s ballads were popular, and much of Bishop’s music; as, indeed, it is still. Barnett’s or Lee’s music, however, is now more approved in the concert-rooms than Bishop’s. Our plan was, and is, to inquire at gentlemen’s houses if they wish to hear glee or solo singing, and to sing in the street or in the halls, as well as at parties. When we first commenced we have made 3l. and 3l. 10s. in a night this way; but that was on extraordinary occasions; and 3l. a-week might be the average earnings, take the year through. These earnings continued eight or ten years, and then fell off. Other amusements attracted attention. Now, my wife, my daughter, and I may make 25s. a-week by open-air singing. Concert-singing is extra, and the best payment is a crown per head a night for low-priced concerts. The inferior vocalists get 4s., 3s., 2s. 6d., and some as low as 2s. Very many who sing at concerts have received a high musical education; but the profession is so overstocked, that excellent singers are compelled to take poor engagements.” The better sort of cheap concert-singers, the man and wife both agreed in stating, were a well-conducted body of people, often struggling for a very poor maintenance, the women rarely being improper characters. “But now,” said the husband, “John Bull’s taste is inclined to the brutal and filthy. Some of the ‘character songs,’ such as ‘Sam Hall,’ ‘Jack Sheppard,’ and others, are so indelicate that a respectable man ought not to take his wife and daughters to see them. The men who sing character songs are the worst class of singers, both as regards character and skill; they are generally loose fellows; some are what is called ‘fancy men,’ persons supported wholly or partly by women of the town. I attempted once to give concerts without these low-character singings; but it did not succeed, for I was alone in the attempt. I believe there are not more than half-a-dozen street vocalists of the same class as ourselves. They are respectable persons; and certainly open-air singing, as we practise it, is more respectable than popular concert-singing as now carried on. No one would be allowed to sing such songs in the streets. The ‘character’ concerts are attended generally by mechanics and their families; there are more males than females among the audiences.”

The street classes that are still undescribed are the lower class of street singers, the Street Artists, the Writers without Hands, and the Street Exhibition-keepers. I shall begin with the Street Singers.

Concerning the ordinary street ballad-singers, I received the following account from one of the class:—

“I am what may be termed a regular street ballad-singer—either sentimental or comic, sir, for I can take both branches. I have been, as near as I can guess, about five-and-twenty years at the business. My mother died when I was thirteen years old, and in consequence of a step-mother home became too hot to hold me, and I turned into the streets in consequence of the harsh treatment I met with. My father had given me no education, and all I know now I have picked up in the streets. Well, at thirteen years, I turned into the streets, houseless, friendless. My father was a picture-frame gilder. I was never taught any business by him—neither his own nor any other. I never received any benefit from him that I know. Well then, sir, there was I, a boy of thirteen, friendless, houseless, untaught, and without any means of getting a living—loose in the streets of London. At first I slept anywhere: sometimes I passed the night in the old Covent-garden-market; at others, in shutter-boxes; and at others, on door-steps near my father’s house. I lived at this time upon the refuse that I picked up in the streets—cabbage-stumps out of the market, orange-peel, and the like. Well, sir, I was green then, and one of the Stamp-office spies got me to sell some of the Poor Man’s Guardians, (an unstamped paper of that time), so that his fellow-spy might take me up. This he did, and I had a month at Coldbath-fields for the business. After I had been in prison, I got in a measure hardened to the frowns of the world, and didn’t care what company I kept, or what I did for a living. I wouldn’t have you to fancy, though, that I did anything dishonest. I mean, I wasn’t particular as to what I turned my hand to for a living, or where I lodged. I went to live in Church-lane, St. Giles’s, at a threepenny house; and having a tidy voice of my own, I was there taught to go out ballad-singing, and I have stuck to the business ever since. I was going on for fifteen when I first took to it. The first thing I did was to lead at glee-singing; I took the air, and two others, old hands, did the second and the bass. We used to sing the ‘Red Cross Knight,’ ‘Hail, smiling Morn,’ and harmonize ‘The Wolf,’ and other popular songs. Excepting when we needed money, we rarely went out till the evening. Then our pitches were in quiet streets or squares, where we saw, by the light at the windows, that some party was going on. Wedding-parties was very good, in general quite a harvest. Public-houses we did little at, and then it was always with the parlour company; the tap-room people have no taste for glee-singing. At times we took from 9s. to 10s. of an evening, the three of us. I am speaking of the business as it was about two or three-and-twenty years ago. Now, glee-singing is seldom practised in the streets of London: it is chiefly confined to the provinces, at present. In London, concerts are so cheap now-a-days, that no one will stop to listen to the street glee-singers; so most of the ‘schools,’ or sets, have gone to sing at the cheap concerts held at the public-houses. Many of the glee-singers have given up the business, and taken to the street Ethiopians instead. The street glee-singers had been some of them brought up to a trade, though some had not. Few were so unfortunate as me—to have none at all. The two that I was with had been a ladies’ shoemaker and a paper-hanger. Others that I knew had been blacksmiths, carpenters, linendrapers’ shopmen, bakers, French-polishers, pastrycooks, and such-like. They mostly left their business and took to glee-singing when they were young. The most that I knew were from nineteen to twenty-two years old; that had in general been a little rackety, and had got stage-struck or concert-struck at public-houses: they had got praised for their voices, and so their vanity led them to take to it for a living, when they got hard up. Twenty years ago there must have been at the east and west ends at least fourteen different sets, good and bad; and in each set there was, on an average, three singers: now I don’t think there is one set at work in London streets. After I had been three years glee-singing in the streets, I took up with the ballad business, and found it more lucrative than the glee line. Sometimes I could take 5s. in the day, and not work heavily for it either; but at other times I couldn’t take enough to pay my lodging. When any popular song came up, that was our harvest. ‘Alice Gray,’ ‘The Sea,’ ‘Bridal Ring,’ ‘We met,’ ‘The Tartar Drum,’ (in which I was well known,) ‘The Banks of the Blue Moselle,’ and such-like, not forgetting ‘The Mistletoe Bough;’ these were all great things to the ballad-singers. We looked at the bill of fare for the different concert-rooms, and then went round the neighbourhood where these songs were being sung, because the airs being well known, you see it eased the way for us. The very best sentimental song that ever I had in my life, and which lasted me off and on for two years, was Byron’s ‘Isle of Beauty.’ I could get a meal quicker with that than with any other. ‘The Mistletoe Bough’ got me many a Christmas dinner. We always works at that time. It would puzzle any man, even the most exactest, to tell what they could make by ballad-singing in the street. Some nights it would be wet, and I should be hoarse, and then I’d take nothing. I should think that, take one week with another, my earnings were barely more than 10s. a-week: 12s. a-week on the average, I should think, would be the very outside. Street ballad-singers never go out in costume. It is generally supposed that some who appear without shoes and wretchedly clad are made up for the purpose of exciting charity; but this the regular street ballad-singer never does.

“He is too independent to rank himself with the beggars. He earns his money, he fancies, and does not ask charity. Some of the ballad-singers may perhaps be called beggars, or rather pensioners—that is the term we give them; but these are of the worst description of singers, and have money given to them neither for their singing nor songs, but in pity for their age and infirmities. Of these there are about six in London. Of the regular ballad-singers, sentimental and comic, there are not less than 250 in and about London. Occasionally the number is greatly increased by an influx from the country. I should say that throughout England, Wales, and Scotland, there is not less than 700 who live solely by ballad-singing, and selling ballads and song-books. In London the ballad-singers generally work in couples—especially the comic singers. The sentimental generally go alone; but there are very few in London who are merely sentimental ballad-singers—not more than a dozen at the very outside. The rest sing whatever comes up. The tunes are mostly picked up from the street bands, and sometimes from the cheap concerts, or from the gallery of the theatre, where the street ballad-singers very often go, for the express purpose of learning the airs. They are mostly utterly ignorant of music, and some of them get their money by the noise they make, by being paid to move on. There is a house in the Blackfriars’-road where the people has been ill for the last 16 years, and where the street ballad-singer always goes, because he is sure of getting 2d. there to move on. Some, too, make a point of beginning their songs outside of those houses where the straw is laid down in front; where the knockers are done up in an old glove the ballad-singer is sure to strike up. The comic songs that are popular in the street are never indecent, but are very often political. They are generally sung by two persons, one repeating the two first lines of the verse, and the other the two last. The street-ballads are printed and published chiefly in the Seven Dials. There are four ballad-publishers in that quarter, and three at the East-end. Many ballads are written expressly for the Seven-Dials press, especially the Newgate and the political ones, as well as those upon any topic of the day. There are five known authors for the Dials press, and they are all street ballad-singers. I am one of these myself. The little knowledge I have I picked up bit by bit, so that I hardly know how I have come by it. I certainly knew my letters before I left home, and I have got the rest off the dead walls and out of the ballads and papers I have been selling. I write most of the Newgate ballads now for the printers in the Dials, and, indeed, anything that turns up. I get a shilling for a ‘copy of verses written by the wretched culprit the night previous to his execution.’ I wrote Courvoisier’s sorrowful lamentation. I called it, ‘A Woice from the Gaol.’ I wrote a pathetic ballad on the respite of Annette Meyers. I did the helegy, too, on Rush’s execution. It was supposed, like the rest, to be written by the culprit himself, and was particular penitent. I didn’t write that to order—I knew they would want a copy of verses from the culprit. The publisher read it over, and said, ‘That’s the thing for the street public.’ I only got a shilling for Rush. Indeed, they are all the same price, no matter how popular they may be. I wrote the life of Manning in verse. Besides these, I have written the lament of Calcraft the hangman on the decline of his trade, and many political songs. But song and Newgate ballad-writing for the Dials is very poor work. I’ve got five times as much for writing a squib for a rag-shop as for a ballad that has taken me double the time.”

It sometimes happens that a lad or a man, before being thrown for a living on the streets, has often sung a song to amuse his companions, or that he has been reckoned “a good whistler,” so he resolves to start out and see if he cannot turn to pecuniary profits that which until now he had only regarded in the light of an amusement.

The young man from whom I elicited the annexed statement was one of this class. His appearance was rather ungainly, and when he walked across the room he moved in so slovenly a manner that one leg appeared to drag itself after the other with the greatest reluctance.

When telling me that he had never been guilty of stealing, nor imprisoned, all his life, he did so in such a manner, and with such a tone of voice, as left little doubt on my mind that he had been kept honest more by the fear of the gaol than by his own moral principle.

His face was long and thin, and his cheeks so hollowed by long whistling, that they appeared almost to have had a round piece of flesh scooped out of the centre of each of them. His large thick lips were generally kept half-an-inch apart, so that they gave the man a half-idiotic look; and when he rounded them for whistling, they reminded me somewhat of a lamb’s kidney.

“I am a whistler—that is, I whistle merely with my lips, without the aid of anything besides. I have been at it about seven years. I am twenty next birthday. My father was, and is, a coach-painter. He is, I think, at the present time, working in Great Queen-street, Lincoln’s-inn-fields. I had three sisters and one brother. I was the youngest but two. When I got to be about seven years old my mother died, and then I used to get into the streets and stop out all day playing with other boys, most of them older than myself; and they often persuaded me to ‘hop the wag,’ that is, play truant from school, and spend the money which my father gave me to take to the master. Sometimes they took me to Covent-garden or Farringdon Market, where they used to prig a lot of apples and pears, not with the idea of selling them, but to eat. They used to want me to do the same, but I never would nor never did, or else I dare say I should have been better off, for they say ‘the biggest rogues get on best.’ I was always afraid of being sent to prison, a place I was never in in all my life. At last I was persuaded by two young companions to stop out all night, so we all three went to Mrs. Reding’s, Church-lane, and had a fourpenny lodging a-piece. My pals paid for me, because I’d got no money. I left them the next morning, but was afraid to go home; I had got nothing to eat, so I thought I’d see if I gould get a few ha’pence by singing a song. I knew two or three, and began with the ‘Mariner’s Grave,’ and then ‘Lucy Neal.’ I walked about all day, singing nearly the whole of the time, but didn’t get a penny till about six o’clock. By nine o’clock I mustered 10d., and then I left off, and went to a lodging-house in Whitechapel, where I got something to eat, and paid my lodging for the night. It’s a custom always to pay before-hand. The next morning I felt very down-hearted, and was half a mind to go home, but was afraid I should get a hiding. However, I at last plucked up my spirits, and went out again. I didn’t get anything given me till about dinner-time, when a gentleman came up to me and asked me how so young a boy as me come to be in the streets? I told him I couldn’t earn my living any other way. He asked my name, and where I lived. I gave him both a false name and address, for I was afraid lest he should go to my father. He said I had better go home with him, so he took me to his house in Grosvenor-square, which was a very fine un—for he was a very rich man, where he gave me plenty to eat, and made me wash myself, and put on a suit of his little boy’s left-off clothes. I stayed here three months, being employed to clean knives and boots, and run of errands. He used to send me twice a-week to the Bank of England with a cheque, which he used to write upon and tear out of a book, and I used to bring back the money. They always tied it up safely for me in a bag, and I put it into my pocket, and never took my hand off it till I got safe back again. At the end of three months he called me one day, and told me he was going with his wife and family into the country, where, he was sorry to say, there’d be no room for me. He then gave me 3l., and told me to go and seek for my friends, and go and live with them if I could.

“I went home to my father, who was greatly pleased at seeing me again; and he asked what I had been doing all the time, and where I had got my clothes and money from. I told him all, and promised I would never run away again,—so he forgave me. However, for a long time he would not let me go out. At last, after a good deal of persuasion, he let me out to look after a place, and I soon got one at Mr. Cooper’s, Surgeon, in Seven Dials, where I had 4s. a week. I used to be there from seven o’clock in the morning till nine at night, but I went home to my meals. After I’d been at my place four months, I by accident set fire to some naphtha, which I was stirring up in the back-yard, and it burnt off all my eyelashes, and so I ‘got the sack.’ When he paid me my wages,—as I was afraid to tell my father what had happened,—I started off to my old quarters in Whitechapel. I stopped there all day on Sunday, and the next three days I wandered about seeking work, but couldn’t get none. I then give it up as a bad job, and picked up with a man named Jack Williams, who had no legs. He was an old sailor, who had got frost-bitten in the Arctic regions. I used to lead him about with a big painted board afore him. It was a picture of the place where he was froze in. We used to go all about Ratcliffe Highway, and sometimes work up as far as Notting Hill. On the average, we got from 8s. to 10s. a-day. My share was about a third. I was with him for fifteen months, till one night I said something to him when he was a-bed that didn’t please him, and he got his knife out and stabbed my leg in two places,—here are the marks. I bled a good deal. The other lodgers didn’t like to hit him for it, on account of his having no legs, but they kicked him out of the house, and would not let him back any more. They all wanted me to lock him up, but I wouldn’t, as he was an old pal. Two or three silk handkerchiefs was tied round my leg, and the next day I was took to St. Thomas’s Hospital, where I remained for about nine days. When I left the head-nurse gave me ten shillings on account of being so destitute—for I was without a ha’penny to call my own. As soon as I got out of the hospital I went down to Billingsgate, and bought some bread and pickled whelks at a stall, but when I pulled out my money to pay for ’em some costermongering chaps knocked me down, and robbed me of 5s. I was completely stunned by the blow. The police came up to see what was the matter, and took me to the station-house, where I stopped till the next morning, when the inspector made me tell where my father lived, and I was taken home to him. For about a month my father kept me under lock and key, and after I had been with him about three months more I ‘stept it’ again, and as I could always whistle very well, I thought I’d try it for a living; so I made a ‘pitch’ in New-street, Covent Garden, and began by whistling ‘Will you love me then as now?’ but there wasn’t many in the world as loved me. I did very well though that day, for I got about 3s. 6d. or 4s., so I thought I’d practise it and stick to it. I worked all about town till I got well known. I used, sometimes, to go into public-houses and whistle upon a piece of ’bacco pipe, blowing into the bowl, and moving my fingers as if I was playing a flute, and nobody could tell the difference if they had not seen me. Sometimes I used to be asked to stand outside hotels, taverns, and even club-houses, and give ’em a tune: I often had sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns thrown me. I only wish I had sich luck now, for the world’s topsy-turvy, and I can’t get hardly anything. I used then to earn 3s. or 4s. a-day, and now it don’t amount to more than 1s. 6d.

“After I’d worked London pretty well, I sometimes would start off a few miles out to the towns and villages; but, generally, it wasn’t much account. The country chaps like sich tunes as ‘The Barley Stack,’ or ‘The Little House under the Hill.’ I often used to whistle to them while they danced. They liked jigs mostly, and always paid me a penny a dance each.

“I recollect once when I was whistling before a gentleman’s house down at Hounslow, he sent his servant and called me in. I was taken into a fine large room, full of looking-glasses, and time-pieces, and pictures. I was never in sich a room before, all my life. The gentleman was there with his family,—about six on ’em,—and he told me if I’d whistle, and learn his birds to sing, he’d give me a sovereign. He had three fine brass-wire cages, with a bird in each, slung all of a row from the ceiling. I set to work ‘like a brick,’ and the birds begun to sing directly, and I amused ’em very much. I stopped about an hour and a half, and let ’em have all sorts of tunes, and then he gave me a sovereign, and told me to call again when I come that way; but before I left he said the servants was to give me something to eat and drink, so I had dinner in the kitchen with the servants, and a jolly good dinner it was.

“From Hounslow I walked to Maidenhead, and took a lodging for the night at the Turk’s Head. In the evening some countrymen come into the tap-room and kicked up a row with the missus because she couldn’t lodge ’em. She run in to turn then away, when three of ’em pitched into her right and left; and if it hadn’t been for me and another chap she’d have got killed. When they got her down I jumped upon the table and snatched up the only weapon I could find, a brass candlestick, and knocked one of ’em down senseless, and the other fellow got hold of a broomstick and give it ’em as hard as he could, till we beat ’em right out of the place. There happened to be some police outside, drilling, who came over and took three of them to the stocks, where they was locked in for twenty-four hours. The next day the magistrate sentenced ’em to three months’ imprisonment each, and I started for London and never whistled a tune till I reached it, which was three days afterwards. I kept on at the old game, earning about 2s. 6d. a-day, till the militia was being called out, and then I joined them, for I thought it would be the best thing I could do. I was sworn in by Colonel Scrivens at Eton Mews. We was taken into a stable, where there was three horses. Four of us laid hold of a book altogether; and then, after asking us if we had any complaints, or were lame, or any way unfit for service, or was married, or had any children; and when we had said No, he asked us if we was free, able, and willing to serve in her Majesty’s militia, in either England, Ireland, Scotland, or Wales, for the term of five years, if so long her Majesty required our services; and when we said we was, we took the oath and kissed the book.

“The same day, which was the 11th of June, 1854, we was packed off from the Waterloo Station for Portsmouth. After being drilled for three weeks I was returned for duty, and went on guard. The first guard I mounted was at Detached Dock at Portsmouth—it’s where the convicts are. I didn’t do any whistling there, I can tell yer; I’d different sorts of work, for part of our duty was to bury the poor fellows that died after coming home invalided from the Crimea. The people through that used to call us the ‘garrison undertakers.’ I was there thirteen months, and never, the whole time, had more than two nights’ bed a-week; and some part of the time the weather was very frosty, and we was often over our ankles in snow. I belonged to the 4th Middlesex, and no corps ever did so much duty, or went through so much hardships, as ours. From Portsmouth I was ordered, with my regiment, 950 strong, to Buttervant, county Cork, Ireland. When we reached the Irish Channel a storm arose, and we was all fastened under hatches, and not suffered to come upon deck for four days, by which time we reached the Cove of Cork: the Colonel’s horse had to be thrown overboard, and they, more than once, had serious thoughts of throwing all the luggage into the sea as well. I was ten months in Ireland. I didn’t do any whistling there; and then the regiment was ordered home again on account of the peace. But before we left we had a day’s sport, consisting of greasy-pole climbing, jumping in sacks, racing after a pig with a greasy tail, and all them sort of things; and at night the officers had a grand ball. We landed at Portsmouth on a Monday morning at four o’clock, and marched through to the station, and reached Hounslow about four o’clock the same afternoon. A month after we were disembodied, and I came at once to London. I had about 1l. 5s. in my pocket, and I resolved in my own mind never to go whistling any more. I went to my father, but he refused to help me in any way. I tried for work, but couldn’t get any, for the people said, they didn’t like a militia man; so, after having spent all my money, I found that I must either starve or whistle, and so, you see, I’m once more on the streets.

“While I was in Ireland I absented myself from the barracks for twenty-one days, but fearing that a picket would get hold of me, I walked in one morning at six o’clock. I was instantly placed under arrest in the guard-room, where I remained four days, when I was taken before the Colonel, and to my great surprise I saw, sitting aside of him, the very gentleman who had given me the pound to whistle to his birds; his name was Colonel Bagot, as I found out afterwards, and he was deputy-magistrate for Middlesex. He asked me if I was not the chap as had been to his house; I told him I was, so he got me off with a good reprimand, and saved me being tried by a court-martial. When I first took to sleeping at lodging-houses they was very different to what they are now. I’ve seen as many as eighteen people in one cellar sleeping upon loose straw, covered with sheets or blankets, and as many as three in one bed; but now they won’t take in any little boys like as I was, unless they are with their parents; and there’s very few beds in a room, and never more than one in a bed. Married people have a place always parted off for themselves. The inspector comes in all times—often in the middle of the night—to see that the regulations ain’t broken.

“I used, one time, to meet another man whistling, but like old Dick, who was the first at the profession, he’s gone dead, and so I’m the only one at it now anywhere. It’s very tiring work, and makes you precious hungry when you keep at it for two or three hours; and I only wish I could get something else to do, and you’d see how soon I’d drop it.

“The tunes that are liked best in the streets is sich as ‘Ben Bolt’ and ‘Will you love me then as now?’ but a year or two ago, nothin’ went down like the ‘Low-back Car.’ I was always being asked for it. I soon gets hold of the new tunes that comes up. I don’t think whistling hurts me, because I don’t blow so hard as ‘old Dick’ used. A gentleman come up to me once in the street that was a doctor, and asked me whether I drunk much, and whether I drawed my breath in or blowed it out. I told him I couldn’t get much to drink, and he said I ought at least to have three half-pints of beer a-day, or else I should go into a consumption; and when I said I mostly blowed out when I whistled, he said that was the best, because it didn’t strain the lungs so much.”

At the present time there is only one English boy going about the streets of London dancing, and at the same time playing his own musical accompaniment on a tin whistle. There are two or three Italian boys who dance whilst they perform on either the flute or the hurdy-gurdy, but the lad who gave me the following statement assured me that he was the only Englishman who had made street whistling and dancing “his profession.”

He was a red-headed lad, of that peculiar white complexion which accompanies hair of that colour. His forehead was covered with freckles, so thick, that they looked as if a quantity of cayenne pepper had been sprinkled over it; and when he frowned, his hair moved backwards and forwards like the twitching of a horse shaking off flies.

“I’ve put some ile on my hair, to make me look tidy,” he said. The grease had turned his locks to a fiery crimson colour, and as he passed his hands through it, and tossed it backwards, it positively glittered with the fat upon it.

The lad soon grew communicative enough, and proceeded to show me a blue jacket which he had bought that morning for a shilling, and explained to me at the same time how artful he had been over the bargain, for the boy had asked eighteenpence.

I remarked that his shoes seemed in a bad state, for they were really as white as a baker’s slippers from want of blacking, and the toe of one gaped like the opening to a tortoise-shell. He explained to me that he wore all his boots out dancing, doing the double shuffle.

“Now these ’ere shoes,” he said, “cost me a shilling in Petticoat-lane not a week since, and looked as good as new then, and even now, with a little mending, they’ll make a tidy pair of crab-shells again.”

To give force to this remark, he lifted his leg up, but, despite his explanation, I could not see how the leather could possibly be repaired.

He went through his dances for me, at the same time accompanying himself on his penny whistle. He took his shoes off and did a hornpipe, thumping his feet upon the floor the while, like palms on a panel, so that I felt nervous lest there should be a pin in the carpet and he be lamed by it.

The boy seemed to have no notion of his age, for although he accounted for twenty-two years of existence, yet he insisted he was only seventeen “come two months.” I was sorry to find, moreover, that he was in the habit of drinking, seldom going home after his night’s work without being intoxicated; and, indeed, his thin body and pinched face bore evidence of his excess in this respect, though, but for his assertion that “he was never hungry, and food was no good to him,” I should have imagined, at the first glance, that he was pining with want.

He seems to be among the more fortunate of those who earn their living in the streets, for although I questioned and cross-questioned him in every possible way, he still clung to his assertion that he made 2l. per week. His clothes, however, bore no evidence of his prosperity, for his outer garment was a washed-out linen blouse, such as glaziers wear, whilst his trousers were of coarse canvas, and as black on the thighs as the centre of a drum-head.

He brought with him a penny whistle to show me his musical talents, and, certainly, his execution of the tin instrument was rapid and certain.

The following is the statement he gave me:—

That’s my name, and I’m known all round about in the Borough as ‘Whistling Billy,’ though some, to be sure, calls me ‘Whistling Bill,’ but in general I’m ‘Billy.’ I’m not looking very respectable now, but you should see me when I’m going to the play; I looks so uncommon respectable, nobody knows me again. I shall go to the theatre next week, and I should just like you to see me. It’s surprising.

“I ain’t a very fat chap, am I? but I’m just meaty enough for my perfession, which is whistling and dancing in public-houses, where I gives ’em the hornpipe and the bandy jig, that’s dancing with my toes turned in.

“My father was a barber. He only charged a penny for shaving, but he wouldn’t cut your hair under twopence, and he used to do well—very well sometimes; I don’t know whether he’s alive now, for I ain’t seen him these ten years, nor asked him for a halfpenny. Mother was alive when I left, and so was my two brothers. I don’t know whether they’re alive now. No, I don’t want to go and see him, for I can get my own living. He used to keep a shop near Fitzroy-square.

“I was always fond of dancing, and I runned away from home for to follow it. I don’t know my own age exactly: I was as tall then as I am now. I was twelve when I left home, and it must be ten years ago, but I ain’t twenty-two: oh, dear no! Why, I ain’t got no whiskers nor things. I drink such a lot of beer and stuff, that I can’t grow no taller; gentlemen at the public-houses gives it me. Why, this morning I was near tipsy, dancing to some coalheavers, who gave me drink.

“I used, when I was at father’s, to go to a ball, and that’s where I learned to dance. It was a shilling ball in the New-road, where there was ladies, regular nice ones, beautifully dressed. They used to see me dancing, and say, when I growed up I should make a beautiful dancer; and so I do, for I’d dance against anybody, and play the whistle all the time. The ladies at these balls would give me money then for dancing before them. Ah! I’d get my entrance shilling back, and four or five into the bargain. I’d generally take it home to mother, after buying a little sweet-stuff, or such-like, and I think that’s why mother would let me go, ’cos I picked up a good bit of money.

“It was another boy that put me up to running away from home. He axed me to go along with him, and I went. I dare say it troubled father a bit when he found I’d gone. I ain’t troubled him for ten years now. If I was to go back to him, he’d only send me to work, and I make a better living by myself. I don’t like work, and, to tell you the truth, I never did work, for it’s like amusement to me to dance; and it must be an amusement, ’cos it amuses the people, and that’s why I gets on so well.

“When I hooked it with that chap, we went to Croydon, in Surrey. We went to a lodging-house where there was men and women, and boys and chaps, and all like that; we all slept in one room. I had no money with me, only my clothes; there was a very nice velvet cap; and I looked very different then to what I do now. This young chap had some tin, and he kept me. I don’t know how he earned his tin, for he’d only go out at night time, and then he’d come home and bring in money, and meat and bread, and such-like. He said to me, before I went pals with him, that he’d keep me, and that he’d make plenty of money. He told me he wanted a chum to mate with, so I went with him right off. I can’t say what he was. He was about thirteen or fourteen, and I never seed him do no work. He might have been a prig for all I knows.

“After I’d been in the lodging-house, this chap bought a stock of combs and cheap jewels, and then we went out together, and he’d knock at the houses and offer the things for sale, and I’d stand by. There’s a lot of gentlemen’s houses, if you recollect, sir, round Croydon, on the London road. Sometimes the servants would give us grub instead of money. We had plenty to eat. Now you comes to speak of it, I do remember he used to bring back some old silver with him, such as old tablespoons or ladles, broke up into bits, and he’d make a deal selling them. I think he must have been a prig. At night we used to go to the public-houses and dance. He never danced, but sit down and looked on. He said he was my relation, and I always shared my drink with him, and the people would say, ‘Feed me, feed my dog,’ seeing me going halves with him.

“I kept along with him for three years, he working in the day, and I at night, dancing. We parted at Plymouth, and I took up with another mate, and worked on to Exeter. I think my new mate was a regular prig, for it was through his putting me up to prigging that I got into trouble there. This chap put me on to taking a brass cock from a foundry. It was in a big wooden butt, with 150 gallons of water in it. I got over a gate and pulled it out, and set all the foundry afloat. We cut away, but two hours afterwards the policeman come to the lodging-house, and though there was a lot of boys and girls, he picked me out, and I had two months for it, and all my hair was cut off, and I only had dry bread and gruel every day, and soup twice a-week. I was jolly sorry for that cock business when I was caught, and I made up my mind never to take nothing more. It’s going to the lodging-houses puts fellows up to prigging. The chaps brings in legs of beef, and puddens, and clothes, and then they sells ’em cheap. You can sometimes buy a pair of breeches, worth ten shillings, for two bob, for the chaps don’t like to take ’em to sell at the shops, and would sooner sell ’em for a’most nothing rather than be found out.

“When I came out of quod I had a shilling give me, and I went and bought a penny whistle. I was always fond of music and dancing, and I know’d a little of playing the whistle. Mother and father was both uncommon fond of dancing and music, and used to go out dancing and to concerts, near every night pretty well, after they’d locked the shop up. I made about eleven bob the first week I was out, for I was doing very well of a night, though I had no hair on my head. I didn’t do no dancing, but I knew about six tunes, such as ‘Rory O’More,’ and ‘The Girl I left behind me,’ two hornpipes, (the Fishers’ and the Sailors’) ‘St. Patrick’s Day,’ and ‘The Shells of the Ocean,’ a new song as had just come up. I can play fifty tunes now. Whistles weren’t so common then, they weren’t out a quarter so much as now. Swinden had the making of them then, but he weren’t the first maker of them. Clarke is the largest manufactory of them now, and he followed Swinden. People was astonished at seeing a tune played on a tin whistle, and gave pretty liberal. I believe I was the first as ever got a living on a tin whistle. Now there’s more. It was at that time as I took to selling whistles. I carried ’em on a tin tray before me, and a lid used to shut on it, fixed. I’d pitch before a hotel amongst the gentlemen, and I’d get 2d. a-piece for the whistles, and some would give me sixpence or a shilling, just according. The young gents was them as bought most, and then they’d begin playing on them, and afterwards give them to the young ladies passing. They was very pleased with me, for I was so little, and I done well. The first two months I made about 17s. or 18s. a-week, but after that they got rather dull, so I gived up selling of them and took to dancing. It didn’t pay me so well as the whistles, for it was pretty near all profit on them—they only cost me 3d. a-dozen. I travelled all round Devonshire, and down to Land’s End, in Cornwall—320 miles from London, and kept on playing the whistle on the road. I knew all about them parts. I generally pitched before the hotels and the spirit-shops, and began whistling and dancing; but sometimes I’d give the cottagers a turn, and they’d generally hand over a ha’penny a-piece and some bread.

“I stopped travelling about the south of England, and playing and dancing, for a little better than four years and a half. I didn’t do so well in winter as in summer. Harvest time was my best time. I’d go to the fields where they was working, and play and dance. Sometimes the master would hollar out, ‘Here, you get out of this!’ but the men would speak up for me and say, ‘Let him stop, master.’ Many a chap’s got the sack through me, by leaving off his work and beginning to dance. Sometimes, when the last load of hay was going home (you see, that’s always considered the jolliest part of the work), they’d make me get up to the top of the load, and then whistle to them. They was all merry—as merry as could be, and would follow after dancing about, men, women, and boys. I generally played at the harvest suppers, and the farmer himself would give me 4s. 6d. or 5s. the night, besides my quart of ale. Then I’d pick up my 6s. or 7s. in ha’pence among the men. I’ve had as many as two harvest suppers a week for three weeks or a month following, for I used to ax the people round what time they was going to have a supper, and where, and set off, walking nine or ten miles to reach the farm, and after that we find another spot.

“It’s very jolly among farm people. They give you plenty of cider and ale. I’ve drunk the cider hot, whilst they was brewing it—new cider, you know. You never want food neither, for there’s more than you can eat, generally bread and cheese, or maybe a little cold biled pork. At night, the men and women used to sleep in a kind of barn, among the clean straw; and after the beer-shops had closed—they are all little beer-shops, 3d. a quart in your own jugs, and like that—they’d say to me, ‘Come up to the doss and give us a tune,’ and they’d come outside and dance in the open air, for they wouldn’t let them have no candles nor matches. Then they’d make theirselves happy, and I’d play to ’em, and they’d club up and give me money, sometimes as much as 7s., but I’ve never had no higher than that, but never no less than 3s. One man used to take all the money for me, and I’d give him a pot o’ ale in the morning. It was a penny a dance for each of ’em as danced, and each stand-up took a quarter of a hour, and there was generally two hours of it; that makes about seven dances, allowing for resting. I’ve had as many as forty dancing at a time, and sometimes there was only nine of ’em. I’ve seen all the men get up together and dance a hornpipe, and the women look on. They always did a hornpipe or a country dance. You see, some of ’em would sit down and drink during the dance, but it amounted to almost three dances each person, and generally there was about fifty present. Usually the men would pay for the women, but if they was hard up and been free with their money, the girls would pay for them. They was mostly Irish, and I had to do jigs for them, instead of a hornpipe. My country dance was to the tune ‘Oh don’t you tease me, pretty little dear.’ Any fiddler knows that air. It’s always played in the country for country dances. First they dances to each other, and then it’s hands across, and then down the middle, and then it’s back again and turn. That’s the country dance, sir. I used to be regular tired after two hours. They’d stick me up on a box, or a tub, or else they’d make a pile of straw, and stick me a-top of it; or if there was any carts standing by loaded with hay, and the horses out, I was told to mount that. There was very little drinking all this time, because the beer-shops was shut up. Perhaps there might be such a thing as a pint of beer between a man and his partner, which he’d brought in a can along with him. They only danced when it was moonlight. It never cost me nothing for lodgings all the harvest times, for they would make me stop in the barn along with them; and they was very good company, and took especial care of me. You mustn’t think this dancing took place every night, but only three or four nights a-week. I find ’em out travelling along the road. Sometimes they’ve sent a man from one farm-house to bespeak me whilst I was playing at another. There was a man as played on the clarionet as used to be a favourite among haymakers, but they prefer the penny tin whistle, because it makes more noise, and is shriller, and is easier heard; besides, I’m very rapid with my fingers, and makes ’em keep on dancing till they are tired out. Please God, I’ll be down among them again this summer. I goes down regular. Last year and the year before, and ever since I can recollect.

“When I’m in London I make a good living at dancing and playing, for I’m the only one that plays the whistle and dances at the same time. I’m reckoned the best hand at it of any man in town or country. I’ve often been backed by the company to dance and play against another man, and I generally win. I’ve been in hotels, and danced to gentlemen, and made plenty of money at it. I do all manner of tricks, just to make ’em laugh—capering, or ‘hanky-panky,’ as I term it. I once had half-a-sovereign given to me, but I think it was a mistake, for he says, ‘Take that, and go on.’ I went home to clean myself, and had my trousers washed, and my shoes blacked, and went half-price to the theatre—the ‘Wic,’ I think it was—and paid my shilling, and went in as tidy as a gentleman.

“When I first go into a public-house I go into the tap-room, and say, ‘Would you like to hear a tune, gentlemen, or see a dance, or a little bit of amusement?’ If they say ‘No,’ I stand still, and begin a talking, to make ’em laugh. I’m not to be choked off easy. I say, ‘Come, gentlemen, can’t you help a poor fellow as is the best dancer in England? I must have some pudden for breakfast, because I ain’t had nothing for three weeks.’ Then some say, ‘Well, I will see the best dancer in England; I’ve got a mag.’ Then after dancing I go to the gentleman who has given me most, and ask him six or seven times ‘to give me a copper,’ declaring he’s the only one as has given me nothing, and that makes the others laugh. I also ask the landlord to give a half-pint of beer to grease my feet, and that makes ’em merry. I generally gets good nobbings (that’s a collection, you know). They likes the dancing better than music; but it’s doing them together that takes. I ax them if they’ll have the hornpipe or the Irish jig, and if they says the jig I do it with my toes turned in, like as if I was bandy; and that’s very popular. I have been to as many as forty public-houses in a evening, and dance inside; or if they won’t let me come in, they’ll say, ‘Dance outside as much as you like,’ and that’s very near as good for me. If I gets inside, I’ll mop up 1s. if it’s good company, or perhaps 3d. or 4d., and always plenty to drink—more than I can take, for I’m generally drunk before I can get home. They never gives me nothing to eat, but it don’t matter, for I’m seldom hungry; but ‘I like a drop of good beer,’ as the song says.

“I’ve been engaged at concert-rooms to dance. I have pumps put on, and light trousers, and a Guernsey, dressed up as a sailor. That was in the country, at Canterbury, and I had 7s. and plenty to eat and drink. I’ve never appeared at a London concert-room, though I’ve been axed to come in and amuse the company; but I wasn’t tidy enough, and didn’t like.

“When I dance in a public-house I take my shoes off and say, ‘Now, gentlemen, watch my steps.’ For the hornpipe I begin with walking round, or ‘twisting’ as the term is; then I stands up, and does a double-shuffle—or the ‘straight fives’ as we calls it; then I walk round again before doing the back-snatches, another kind of double-shuffle. Then I does the rocks of Scilly, that’s when you twists your feet and bends sideways; next comes the double steps and rattles, that is, when the heels makes a rattle coming down; and I finishes with the square step. My next step is to walk round and collect the money. The Irish like to see me do the jig better than the hornpipe. Them two are the only dances I know.

“I make regular 2l. a-week. Yesterday I made 7s. 3d., and it was rainy, so I couldn’t get out till late. At Brighton Regatta I and my mate made 5l. 10s. between us, and at Dover Regatta we made 8l. between us. We squandered 2l. 10s. at the lodging-house in one night, betting and tossing, and playing at cards. We always follows up the regatta. We made only 2l. 10s. at Hastings Regatta. You see we pick up on a Saturday night our 11s. a-piece, and on other days perhaps 5s. or 8s., according to the day.

“I used to go about with a mate who had a wooden leg. He was a beautiful dancer, for he made ’em all laugh. He’s a little chap, and only does the hornpipe, and he’s uncommon active, and knocks his leg against the railings, and makes the people grin. He was very successful at Brighton, because he was pitied.

“I’ve also been about with a school of tumblers. I used to do the dancing between the posturing and likes of that. I’ve learnt tumbling, and I was cricked for the purpose, to teach me. I couldn’t walk for three days. They put my legs round my neck, and then couldn’t get ’em back again. I was in that state, regular doubled up, for two hours, and thought I was done for. Some of my mates said, ‘There, you’ve been and spoiled that chap.’ It’s dreadful painful learning tumbling. When I was out with the posturers I used to play the drum and mouth-pipes; I had a old hat and coat on. Then when my turn come, I’d appear in my professional costume, and a young chap who was a fluter—not a whistler, like me,—would give a tune, and I’d go on the carpet and give the Irish jig or the hornpipe.

“There was four of us in the school, and we’d share a pound a-week each. We were down at Dover there, and put up at the Jolly Sailors. I left them there, and went alone on to the camp where the German Legion was—at Shorncliffe, that’s the place. I stopped there for three weeks, and did very well, taking my 7s. or 8s. a-day.

“After that I got tired of dancing, and thought I’d like a change, so I went out on a fishing-boat. They didn’t give me nothing a-week, only 4s. when we come home after two months, and your clothes, and victuals aboard. We first went fishing for plaice, and soles, and turbots, and we’d land them at Yarmouth, and they’d send them on to Lowestoft, and from there on to London. Then we went codding off the coast of Holland, for cod and haddock. It was just drawing on winter, and very cold. They set me with a line and I had to keep sawing it backwards and forwards till I felt a fish bite, then to hawl it up. One night I was a near froze, and suddenly I had two cods bite at once, and they nearly pulled me over, for they dart about like mad, and tug awful; so I said to the master, ‘I don’t like this work.’ But he answers, ‘You must like it the time you stops here.’ So I made up my mind to bolt the first time I got to shore. I only did it as a change, to see if I liked it. You’re right there, there ain’t no drinking on board.

“When you hawl up a cod they bound about the deck, and they’re as strong as a Scotch terrier dog. When we hold ’em down, we prick them under the fin, to let the wind out of them. It would choke them if we didn’t let it out, for it hisses as it comes off. It’s from dragging them up so quick out of fifteen-fathom water that gives ’em the wind. When they were pricked, we chucked them into the well in the hold, and let them swim about. We killed them when we got to Gravesend by hitting them on the head with tom-boys—the sticks we hauls the line through. After three or four blows they’re stunned, and the blood comes, and they’re killed.

“When I goes into the public-houses, part of my performance is to play the whistle up my nose. I don’t do it in the streets, because if I did there’d be thousands looking at me, and then the police would make a row. Last night I did it. I only pitched at one place, and did my night’s work right off. I took 4s. 3½d. and lots of beer in an hour, from the cabbies and the people and all. At last the police told me to move on. When I plays the whistle up my nose, I puts the end of it in my nostril, and blows down it. I can do that just as easy as with my mouth, only not as loud. I do it as a variety, first in my mouth, then in my nose, and then back again in my mouth. It makes the people laugh. I’ve got a cold now, so I can’t do it so well as at times, but I’ll let you see what it is like.”

He then inserted the wooden tongue of the whistle into his nostril, and blowing down it, began a hornpipe, which, although not so shrill as when he played it with the mouth, was still loud enough to be heard all over the house.

IV.—STREET ARTISTS. — Street Photography. — Statement of a Photographic Man. — The Penny Profile-Cutter. — Blind Profile-Cutter. — Writer without Hands. — Chalker on Flag-stones.

I now come to the Street Artists. These include the artists in coloured chalks on the pavements, the black profile-cutters, and others.

Within the last few years photographic portraits have gradually been diminishing in price, until at the present time they have become a regular article of street commerce. Those living at the west-end of London have but little idea of the number of persons who gain a livelihood by street photography.

There may be one or two “galleries” in the New-road, or in Tottenham-court-road, but these supply mostly shilling portraits. In the eastern and southern districts of London, however, such as in Bermondsey, the New-cut, and the Whitechapel-road, one cannot walk fifty yards without passing some photographic establishment, where for sixpence persons can have their portrait taken, and framed and glazed as well.

It was in Bermondsey that I met with the first instance of what may be called pure street photography. Here a Mr. F——l was taking sixpenny portraits in a booth built up out of old canvas, and erected on a piece of spare ground in a furniture-broker’s yard.

Mr. F——l had been a travelling showman, but finding that photography was attracting more attention than giants and dwarfs, he relinquished the wonders of Nature for those of Science.

Into this yard he had driven his yellow caravan, where it stood like an enormous Noah’s ark, and in front of the caravan (by means of clothes-horses and posts, over which were spread out the large sail-like paintings (show-cloths), which were used at fairs to decorate the fronts of booths), he had erected his operating-room, which is about as long and as broad as a knife-house, and only just tall enough to allow a not particularly tall customer to stand up with his hat off: whilst by means of two window-sashes a glazed roof had been arranged for letting light into this little tent.

On the day of my visit Mr. F——l was, despite the cloudy state of the atmosphere, doing a large business. A crowd in front of his tent was admiring the photographic specimens, which, of all sizes and in all kinds of frames, were stuck up against the canvas-wall, as irregularly as if a bill-sticker had placed them there. Others were gazing up at the chalky-looking paintings over the door-way, and on which a lady was represented photographing an officer, in the full costume of the 11th Hussars.

Inside the operating room we found a crowd of women and children was assembled, all of them waiting their turn to be taken. Mr. F——l remarked, as I entered, that ‘It was wonderful the sight of children that had been took;’ and he added, ‘when one girl comes for her portrait, there’s a dozen comes along with her to see it took.’

The portraits I discovered were taken by Mrs. F——l, who, with the sleeves of her dress tucked up to the elbows, was engaged at the moment of my visit in pointing the camera at a lady and her little boy, who, from his wild nervous expression, seemed to have an idea that the operatress was taking her aim previous to shooting him. Mr. F——l explained to me the reason why his wife officiated. “You see,” said he, “people prefers more to be took by a woman than by a man. Many’s a time a lady tells us to send that man away, and let the missis come. It’s quite natural,” he continued; “for a lady don’t mind taking her bonnet off and tucking up her hair, or sticking a pin in here and there before one of her own sect, which before a man proves objectionable.”

After the portrait had been taken I found that the little square piece of glass on which it was impressed was scarcely larger than a visiting card, and this being handed over to a youth, was carried into the caravan at the back, where the process was completed. I was invited to follow the lad to the dwelling on wheels.

The outside of the caravan was very remarkable, and of that peculiar class of architecture which is a mixture of coach-and-ship building. In the centre of the front of the show were little folding-doors with miniature brass knockers, and glass let into the upper panels. On each side of the door were long windows, almost big enough for a shop-front, whilst the white curtains, festooned at their sides, gave them a pleasant appearance. The entire erection was coloured yellow, and the numerous little wooden joists and tie-beams, which framed and strengthened the vehicle, conferred upon it a singular plaid-like appearance.

I mounted the broad step-ladder and entered. The room reminded me of a ship’s cabin, for it was panelled and had cross-beams to the arched roof, whilst the bolts and fastenings were of bright brass. If the windows had not been so large, or the roof so high, it would have resembled the fore-cabin of a Gravesend steamer. There were tables and chairs, as in an ordinary cottage room. At one end was the family bed, concealed during the day by chintz curtains, which hung down like a drop-scene before a miniature theatre; and between the openings of these curtains I could catch sight of some gaudily attired wax figures stowed away there for want of room, but standing there like a group of actors behind the scenes.

Along one of the beams a blunderbuss and a pistol rested on hooks, and the showman’s speaking trumpet (as large as the funnel to a grocer’s coffee-mill) hung against the wall, whilst in one corner was a kind of cabin stove of polished brass, before which a boy was drying some of the portraits that had been recently taken.

“So you’ve took him at last,” said the proprietor, who accompanied us as he snatched the portrait from the boy’s hand. “Well, the eyes ain’t no great things, but as it’s the third attempt it must do.”

On inspecting the portrait I found it to be one of those drab-looking portraits with a light back-ground, where the figure rises from the bottom of the plate as straight as a post, and is in the cramped, nervous attitude of a patient in a dentist’s chair.

After a time I left Mr. F——l’s, and went to another establishment close by, which had originally formed part of a shop in the penny-ice-and-bull’s-eye line—for the name-board over “Photographic Depôt” was still the property of the confectioner—so that the portraits displayed in the window were surmounted by an announcement of “Ginger beer 1d. and 2d.”

A touter at the door was crying out “Hi! hi!—walk inside! walk inside! and have your c’rect likeness took, frame and glass complete, and only 6d.!—time of sitting only four seconds!”

A rough-looking, red-faced tanner, who had been staring at some coloured French lithographs which decorated the upper panes, and who, no doubt, imagined that they had been taken by the photographic process, entered, saying, “Let me have my likeness took.”

The touter instantly called out, “Here, a shilling likeness for this here gent.”

The tanner observed that he wanted only a sixpenny.

“Ah, very good, sir!” and raising his voice, the touter shouted louder than before—“A sixpenny one first, and a shilling one afterwards.”

“I tell yer I don’t want only sixpennorth,” angrily returned the customer, as he entered.

At this establishment the portraits were taken in a little alley adjoining the premises, where the light was so insufficient, that even the blanket hung up at the end of it looked black from the deep shadows cast by the walls.

When the tanner’s portrait was completed it was nearly black; and, indeed, the only thing visible was a slight light on one side of the face, and which, doubtlessly, accounted for the short speech which the operator thought fit to make as he presented the likeness to his customer.

“There,” he said, “there is your likeness, if you like! look at it yourself; and only eightpence”—“Only sixpence,” observed the man.—“Ah!” continued the proprietor, “but you’ve got a patent American preserver, and that’s twopence more.”

Then followed a discussion, in which the artist insisted that he lost by every sixpenny portrait he took, and the tanner as strongly protesting that he couldn’t believe that, for they must get some profit any how. “You don’t tumble to the rig,” said the artist; “it’s the half-guinea ones, you see, that pays us.”

The touter, finding that this discussion was likely to continue, entered and joined the argument. “Why, it’s cheap as dirt,” he exclaimed indignantly; “the fact is, our governor’s a friend of the people, and don’t mind losing a little money. He’s determined that everybody shall have a portrait, from the highest to the lowest. Indeed, next Sunday, he do talk of taking them for threepence-ha’penny, and if that ain’t philandery, what is?”

After the touter’s oration the tanner seemed somewhat contented, and paying his eightpence left the shop, looking at his picture in all lights, and repeatedly polishing it up with the cuff of his coat-sleeve, as if he were trying to brighten it into something like distinctness.

Whilst I was in this establishment a customer was induced to pay twopence for having the theory of photography explained to him. The lecture was to the effect, that the brass tube of the “camerer” was filled with clock-work, which carried the image from the lens to the ground glass at the back. To give what the lecturer called “hockeylar proof” of this, the camera was carried to the shop-door, and a boy who was passing by ordered to stand still for a minute.

“Now, then,” continued the lecturer to the knowledge-seeker, “look behind here; there’s the himage, you see;” and then addressing the boy, he added, “Just open your mouth, youngster;” and when the lad did so, the student was asked, “Are you looking down the young un’s throat?” and on his nodding assent, he was informed, “Well, that’s the way portraits is took.”

“I’ve been on and off at photographic-portrait taking since its commencement—that is to say, since they were taken cheap—two years this summer. I lodged in a room in Lambeth, and I used to take them in the back-yard—a kind of garden; I used to take a blanket off the bed, and used to tack it on a clothes-horse, and my mate used to hold it, if the wind was high, whilst I took the portrait.

“The reason why I took to photographing was, that I thought I should like it better than what I was at. I was out busking and drag-pitching with a banjo then. Busking is going into public-houses and playing, and singing, and dancing; and drag-pitching is going out in the day down the little courts—tidy places, little terraces, no thoroughfares, we call drags. I’m a very determined chap, and when I take a hidea into my head I always do it somehow or other. I didn’t know anything about photographs then, not a mite, but I saved up my money; sometimes a 1s.; if I had a good day, 1s. 6d.; and my wife she went to work at day boot-binding, and at night dancing at a exhibition, or such-like (she’s a tolerable good dancer—a penny exhibition or a parade dancer at fairs; that is, outside a show); sometimes she is Mademoiselle, or Madame, or what it may be. I got a loan of 3l. (and had to pay 4l. 3s. for it), and with what I’d saved, I managed to get together 5l. 5s., and I went to Gilbert Flemming’s, in Oxford-street, and bought a complete apparatus for taking pictures; 6½ by 4¾, for 5l. 5s. Then I took it home, and opened the next day to take portraits for what we could get—1s. and over. I never knew anything about taking portraits then, though they showed me when I bought the apparatus (but that was as good as nothing, for it takes months to learn). But I had cards ready printed to put in the window before I bought the apparatus. The very next day I had the camera, I had a customer before I had even tried it, so I tried it on him, and I gave him a black picture (for I didn’t know how to make the portrait, and it was all black when I took the glass out), and told him that it would come out bright as it dried, and he went away quite delighted. I took the first Sunday after we had opened 1l. 5s. 6d., and everybody was quite pleased with their spotted and black pictures, for we still told them they would come out as they dried. But the next week they brought them back to be changed, and I could do them better, and they had middling pictures—for I picked it up very quick.

“I had one fellow for a half-guinea portrait, and he was from Woolwich, and I made him come three times, like a lamb, and he stood pipes and ’bacca, and it was a thundering bad one after all. He was delighted, and he swears now it’s the best he ever had took, for it don’t fade, but will stop black to the end of the world; though he remarks that I deceived him in one thing, for it don’t come out bright.

“You see, when first photography come up I had my eye on it, for I could see it would turn me in something some time. I went and worked as a regular labourer, carrying pails and so on, so as to try and learn something about chemistry; for I always had a hankling after science. Me and Jim was out at Stratford, pitching with the banjo, and I saw some men coming out of a chemical works, and we went to ‘nob’ them (that’s get some halfpence out of them). Jim was tambo beating, and we was both black, and they called us lazy beggars, and said we ought to work as they did. So we told them we couldn’t get work, we had no characters. As we went home I and Jim got talking, and he says, ‘What a fine thing if we could get into the berth, for you’d soon learn about them portraits if you get among the chemicals;’ so I agreed to go and try for the situation, and told him that if I got the berth I’d ‘nanti panka his nabs snide;’ that means, I wouldn’t turn him up, or act nasty to him, but would share money the same as if we were pitching again. That slang is mummers’ slang, used by strolling professionals.

“I stopped there for near twelve months, on and off. I had 10s. at first, but I got up to 16s.; and if I’d stopped I’ve no doubt I should have been foreman of one of the departments, for I got at last to almost the management of the oxalic acid. They used to make sulphate of iron—ferri sulp is the word for it—and carbonate of iron, too, and I used to be like the red man of Agar then, all over red, and a’most thought of cutting that to go for a soldier, for I shouldn’t have wanted a uniform. Then I got to charging the retorts to make carbonate of ammonia, and from that I went to oxalic acid.

“At night me and Jim used to go out with the banjo and tamborine, and we could manage to make up our shares to from 18s. to a guinea a-week each; that is, sharing my wages and all; for when we chum together we always panka each other bona (that is, share). We always made our ponta (that is, a pound) a-week, for we could average our duey bionk peroon a darkey, or two shillings each, in the night.

“That’s how I got an idea of chemicals, and when I went to photography many of the very things I used to manufacture was the very same as we used to take portraits, such as the hyposulphate of soda, and the nitrate of silver, and the sulphate of iron.

PHOTOGRAPHIC SALOON, EAST END OF LONDON.

[From a Sketch.]

“One of the reasons why I couldn’t take portraits was, that when I bought my camera at Flemming’s he took a portrait of me with it to show me how to use it, and as it was a dull afternoon he took 90 seconds to produce the picture. So, you see, when I went to work I thought I ought to let my pictures go the same time; and hang me if I didn’t, whether the sun was shining or not. I let my plate stop 90 seconds, and of course they used to come out overdone and quite white, and as the evening grew darker they came better. When I got a good one I was surprised, and that picture went miles to be shown about. Then I formed an idea that I had made a miscalculation as to my time, and by referring to the sixpenny book of instructions I saw my mistake, and by the Sunday—that was five days after—I was very much improved, and by a month I could take a very tidy picture.

“I was getting on so well I got some of my portraits, when they was good ones, put in a chandler’s shop; and to be sure I got first-rate specimens. I used to go to the different shilling portrait galleries and have a likeness of myself or friends done, to exhibit in my own window. That’s the way I got my samples to begin with, and I believe it’s done all over London.

“I kept at this all the winter, and all the time I suppose I earned 30s. a-week. When summer come again I took a place with a garden in the Old Kent-road, and there I done middling, but I lost the majority of my business by not opening on a Sunday, for it was a religious neighbourhood, and I could have earned my 5l. a-week comfortable, for as it was I cleared my 2l. regular. Then I had a regular tent built up out of clothes-horses. I stopped there till I had an offer of a good situation, and I accepted of it, at 2l. a-week.

“My new place was in Whitechapel, and we lowered the price from a shilling to sixpence. We did well there, that is the governor did, you know, for I’ve taken on the average from 60 to 100 a-day, varying in price from sixpence to half-a-guinea, and the majority was shilling ones. The greatest quantity I ever took was 146 in one day, and 124 was taken away as they was done. The governor used to take 20l. a-week, and of that 8l. clear profit, after paying me 2l., the men at the door 24s., a man and woman 29s., and rent 2l. My governor had, to my knowledge, 11 other shops, and I don’t know all of his establishments; I managed my concern for him, and he never come near us sometimes for a month.

“I left on my own accord after four months, and I joined two others on equal shares, and opened a place of my own in Southwark. Unfortunately, I begun too late in the season, or I should have done well there; but at first we realised about 2l. a-week each, and up to last week we have shared our 25s. a-head.

“Sunday is the best day for shilling portraits; in fact, the majority is shilling ones, because then, you see, people have got their wages, and don’t mind spending. Nobody knows about men’s ways better than we do. Sunday and Monday is the Derby-day like, and then after that they are about cracked up and done. The largest amount I’ve taken at Southwark on a Sunday is 80—over 4l. worth, but then in the week-days it’s different; Sunday’s 15s. we think that very tidy, some days only 3s. or 4s.

“You see we are obliged to resort to all sort of dodges to make sixpenny portraits pay. It’s a very neat little picture our sixpenny ones is; with a little brass rim round them, and a neat metal inside, and a front glass; so how can that pay if you do the legitimate business? The glass will cost you 2d. a-dozen—this small size—and you give two with every picture; then the chemicals will cost quite a halfpenny, and varnish, and frame, and fittings, about 2d. We reckon 3d. out of each portrait. And then you see there’s house-rent and a man at the door, and boy at the table, and the operator, all to pay their wages out of this 6d.; so you may guess where the profit is.

“One of our dodges is what we term ‘An American Air-Preserver;’ which is nothing more than a card,—old benefit tickets, or, if we are hard up, even brown paper, or anythink,—soap wrappings, just varnished on one side. Between our private residence and our shop, no piece of card or old paper escapes us. Supposing a party come in, and says ‘I should like a portrait;’ then I inquire which they’ll have, a shilling or a sixpenny one. If they prefer a sixpenny one, I then make them one up, and I show them one of the air-preservers,—which we keep ready made up,—and I tell them that they are all chemicalized, and come from America, and that without them their picture will fade. I also tell them that I make nothing out of them, for that they are only 2d. and cost all the money; and that makes ’em buy one directly. They always bite at them; and we’ve actually had people come to us to have our preservers put upon other persons’ portraits, saying they’ve been everywhere for them and can’t get them. I charge 3d. if it’s not one of our pictures. I’m the original inventor of the ‘Patent American Air-Preserver.’ We first called them the ‘London Air-Preservers;’ but they didn’t go so well as since they’ve been the Americans.

“Another dodge is, I always take the portrait on a shilling size; and after they are done, I show them what they can have for a shilling,—the full size, with the knees; and table and a vase on it,—and let them understand that for sixpence they have all the back-ground and legs cut off; so as many take the shilling portraits as sixpenny ones.

“Talking of them preservers, it is astonishing how they go. We’ve actually had photographers themselves come to us to buy our ‘American Air-Preservers.’ We tells them it’s a secret, and we manufacture them ourselves. People won’t use their eyes. Why, I’ve actually cut up an old band-box afore the people’s eyes, and varnished it and dried it on the hob before their eyes, and yet they still fancy they come from America! Why, we picks up the old paper from the shop-sweeping, and they make first-rate ‘Patent American Air-Preservers.’ Actually, when we’ve been short, I’ve torn off a bit of old sugar-paper, and stuck it on without any varnish at all, and the party has gone away quite happy and contented. But you must remember it is really a useful thing, for it does do good and do preserve the picture.

“Another of our dodges,—and it is a splendid dodge, though it wants a nerve to do it,—is the brightening solution, which is nothing more than aqua distilled, or pure water. When we take a portrait, Jim, my mate, who stops in the room, hollows to me, ‘Is it bona?’ That is,—Is it good? If it is, I say, ‘Say.’ That is,—Yes. If not, I say ‘Nanti.’ If it is a good one he takes care to publicly expose that one, that all may see it, as a recommendation to others. If I say ‘Nanti,’ then Jim takes it and finishes it up, drying it and putting it up in its frame. Then he wraps it up in a large piece of paper, so that it will take sometime to unroll it, at the same time crying out ‘Take sixpence from this lady, if you please.’ Sometimes she says, ‘O let me see it first;’ but he always answers, ‘Money first, if you please ma’am; pay for it first, and then you can do what you like with it. Here, take sixpence from this lady.’ When she sees it, if it is a black one, she’ll say, ‘Why this ain’t like me; there’s no picture at all.’ Then Jim says, ‘It will become better as it dries, and come to your natural complexion.’ If she still grumbles, he tells her that if she likes to have it passed through the brightening solution, it will come out lighter in an hour or two. They in general have it brightened; and then, before their face, we dip it into some water. We then dry it off and replace it in the frame, wrap it up carefully, and tell them not to expose it to the air, but put it in their bosom, and in an hour or two it will be all right. This is only done when the portrait come out black, as it doesn’t pay to take two for sixpence. Sometimes they brings them back the next day, and says, ‘It’s not dried out as you told us;’ and then we take another portrait, and charge them 3d. more.

“We also do what we call the ‘bathing,’—another dodge. Now to-day a party came in during a shower of rain, when it was so dark it was impossible to take a portrait; or they will come in, sometimes, just as we are shutting up, and when the gas is lighted, to have their portraits taken; then we do this. We never turn business away, and yet it’s impossible to take a portrait; so we ask them to sit down, and then we go through the whole process of taking a portrait, only we don’t put any plate in the camera. We always make ’em sit a long time, to make ’em think it’s all right,—I’ve had them for two-and-a-half minutes, till their eyes run down with water. We then tell them that we’ve taken the portrait, but that we shall have to keep it all night in the chemical bath to bring it out, because the weather’s so bad. We always take the money as a deposit, and give them a written paper as an order for the picture. If in the morning they come themselves we get them to sit again, and then we do really take a portrait of them; but if they send anybody, we either say that the bath was too strong and eat the picture out, or that it was too weak and didn’t bring it out; or else I blow up Jim, and pretend he has upset the bath and broke the picture. We have had as many as ten pictures to bathe in one afternoon.

“If the eyes in a portrait are not seen, and they complain, we take a pin and dot them; and that brings the eye out, and they like it. If the hair, too, is not visible we takes the pin again, and soon puts in a beautiful head of hair. It requires a deal of nerve to do it; but if they still grumble I say, ‘It’s a beautiful picture, and worth half-a-crown, at the least;’ and in the end they generally go off contented and happy.

“When we are not busy, we always fill up the time taking specimens for the window. Anybody who’ll sit we take him; or we do one another, and the young woman in the shop who colours. Specimens are very useful things to us, for this reason,—if anybody comes in a hurry, and won’t give us time to do the picture, then, as we can’t afford to let her go, we sit her and goes through all the business, and I says to Jim, ‘Get one from the window,’ and then he takes the first specimen that comes to hand. Then we fold it up in paper, and don’t allow her to see it until she pays for it, and tell her not to expose it to the air for three days, and that if then she doesn’t approve of it and will call again we will take her another. Of course they in general comes back. We have made some queer mistakes doing this. One day a young lady came in, and wouldn’t wait, so Jim takes a specimen from the window, and, as luck would have it, it was the portrait of a widow in her cap. She insisted upon opening, and then she said, ‘This isn’t me; it’s got a widow’s cap, and I was never married in all my life!’ Jim answers, ‘Oh, miss! why it’s a beautiful picture, and a correct likeness,’—and so it was, and no lies, but it wasn’t of her.—Jim talked to her, and says he, ‘Why this ain’t a cap, it’s the shadow of the hair,’—for she had ringlets,—and she positively took it away believing that such was the case; and even promised to send us customers, which she did.

“There was another lady that came in a hurry, and would stop if we were not more than a minute; so Jim ups with a specimen, without looking at it, and it was the picture of a woman and her child. We went through the business of focussing the camera, and then gave her the portrait and took the 6d. When she saw it she cries out, ‘Bless me! there’s a child: I haven’t ne’er a child!’ Jim looked at her, and then at the picture, as if comparing, and says he, ‘It is certainly a wonderful likeness, miss, and one of the best we ever took. It’s the way you sat; and what has occasioned it was a child passing through the yard.’ She said she supposed it must be so, and took the portrait away highly delighted.

“Once a sailor came in, and as he was in haste, I shoved on to him the picture of a carpenter, who was to call in the afternoon for his portrait. The jacket was dark, but there was a white waistcoat; still I persuaded him that it was his blue Guernsey which had come up very light, and he was so pleased that he gave us 9d. instead of 6d. The fact is, people don’t know their own faces. Half of ’em have never looked in a glass half a dozen times in their life, and directly they see a pair of eyes and a nose, they fancy they are their own.

“The only time we were done was with an old woman. We had only one specimen left, and that was a sailor man, very dark—one of our black pictures. But she put on her spectacles, and she looked at it up and down, and says, ‘Eh?’ I said, ‘Did you speak, ma’am?’ and she cries, ‘Why, this is a man! here’s the whiskers.’ I left, and Jim tried to humbug her, for I was bursting with laughing. Jim said, ‘It’s you ma’am; and a very excellent likeness, I assure you.’ But she kept on saying, ‘Nonsense, I ain’t a man,’ and wouldn’t have it. Jim wanted her to leave a deposit, and come next day, but she never called. It was a little too strong.

“There was an old woman come in once and wanted to be taken with a favourite hen in her lap. It was a very bad picture, and so black there was nothing but the outline of her face and a white speck for the beak of the bird. When she saw it, she asked where the bird was? So Jim took a pin and scratched in an eye, and said, ‘There it is, ma’am—that’s her eye, it’s coming out,’ and then he made a line for the comb on the head, and she kept saying, ‘Wonderful!’ and was quite delighted.

“The only bad money we have taken was from a Methodist clergyman, who came in for a 1s. 6d. portrait. He gave us a bad sixpence.

“For colouring we charge 3d. more. If the portraits are bad or dark we tell them, that if they have them coloured the likeness will be perfect. We flesh the face, scratch the eye in, and blue the coat and colour the tablecloth. Sometimes the girl who does it puts in such a lot of flesh paint, that you can scarcely distinguish a feature of the person. If they grumble, we tell them it will be all right when the picture’s dry. If it’s a good picture, the colour looks very nice, but in the black ones we are obliged to stick it on at a tremendous rate, to make it show.

“Jim stands at the door, and he keeps on saying, ‘A correct portrait, framed and glazed, for sixpence, beautifully enamelled.’ Then, when they are listening, he shows the specimen in his hands, and adds, ‘If not approved of, no charge made.’

“One morning, when we had been doing ‘quisby,’ that is, stopping idle, we hit upon another dodge. Some friends dropped in to see me, and as I left to accompany them to a tavern close by, I cried to Jim, ‘Take that public-house opposite.’ He brought the camera and stand to the door, and a mob soon collected. He kept saying, ‘Stand back, gentlemen, stand back! I am about to take the public-house in front by this wonderful process.’ Then he went over to the house, and asked the landlord, and asked some gentlemen drinking there to step into the road whilst he took the house with them facing it. Then he went to a policeman and asked him to stop the carts from passing, and he actually did. By this way he got up a tremendous mob. He then put in the slide, pulled off the cap of the camera, and focussed the house, and pretended to take the picture, though he had no prepared glass, nor nothing. When he had done, he called out, ‘Portraits taken in one minute. We are now taking portraits for 6d. only. Time of sitting, two seconds only. Step inside and have your’n taken immediately.’ There was a regular rush, and I had to be fetched, and we took 6s. worth right off.

“People seem to think the camera will do anything. We actually persuade them that it will mesmerise them. After their portrait is taken, we ask them if they would like to be mesmerised by the camera, and the charge is only 2d. We then focus the camera, and tell them to look firm at the tube; and they stop there for two or three minutes staring, till their eyes begin to water, and then they complain of a dizziness in the head, and give it up, saying they ‘can’t stand it.’ I always tell them the operation was beginning, and they were just going off, only they didn’t stay long enough. They always remark, ‘Well, it certainly is a wonderful machine, and a most curious invention.’ Once a coalheaver came in to be mesmerised, but he got into a rage after five or six minutes, and said, ‘Strike me dead, ain’t you keeping me a while!’ He wouldn’t stop still, so Jim told him his sensitive nerves was too powerful, and sent him off cursing and swearing because he couldn’t be mesmerised. We don’t have many of these mesmerism customers, not more than four in these five months; but it’s a curious circumstance, proving what fools people is. Jim says he only introduces these games when business is dull, to keep my spirits up—and they certainly are most laughable.

“I also profess to remove warts, which I do by touching them with nitric acid. My price is a penny a wart, or a shilling for the job; for some of the hands is pretty well smothered with them. You see, we never turn money away, for it’s hard work to make a living at sixpenny portraits. My wart patients seldom come twice, for they screams out ten thousand blue murders when the acid bites them.

“Another of my callings is to dye the hair. You see I have a good many refuse baths, which is mostly nitrate of silver, the same as all hair-dyes is composed of. I dyes the whiskers and moustache for 1s. The worst of it is, that nitrate of silver also blacks the skin wherever it touches. One fellow with carroty hair came in one day to have his whiskers died, and I went clumsily to work and let the stuff trickle down his chin and on his cheeks, as well as making the flesh at the roots as black as a hat. He came the next day to have it taken off, and I made him pay 3d. more, and then removed it with cyanide, which certainly did clean him, but made him smart awfully.

“I have been told that there are near upon 250 houses in London now getting a livelihood taking sixpenny portraits. There’s ninety of ’em I’m personally acquainted with, and one man I know has ten different shops of his own. There’s eight in the Whitechapel-road alone, from Butcher-row to the Mile-end turnpike. Bless you, yes! they all make a good living at it. Why, I could go to-morrow, and they would be glad to employ me at 2l. a-week—indeed they have told me so.

“If we had begun earlier this summer, we could, only with our little affair, have made from 8l. to 10l. a-week, and about one-third of that is expenses. You see, I operate myself, and that cuts out 2l. a-week.”

The young man from whom the annexed statement was gathered, is one of a class of street-artists now fast disappearing from view, but which some six or seven years ago occupied a very prominent position.

At the period to which I allude, the steam-boat excursionist, or visitor to the pit of a London theatre, whom Nature had favoured with very prominent features, oftentimes found displayed to public view, most unexpectedly, a tolerably correct profile of himself in black paper, mounted upon a white card. As soon as attention was attracted, the exhibitor generally stepped forward, offering, in a respectful manner, to “cut out any lady’s or gentleman’s likeness for the small sum of one penny;” an offer which, judging from the account below given as to the artist’s takings, seems to have been rather favourably responded to.

The appearance presented by the profile-cutter from whom I derived my information bordered on the “respectable.” He was a tall thin man, with a narrow face and long features. His eyes were large and animated. He was dressed in black, and the absence of shirt collar round his bare neck gave him a dingy appearance. He spoke as follows:—

“I’m a penny profile-cutter, or, as we in the profession call ourselves, a profilist. I commenced cutting profiles when I was 14 years of age, always acquiring a taste for cutting out ornaments, &c. My father’s a very respectable man, and been in one situation 27 years. I left school against his wish when I was 10 years old, for I didn’t like school much, though, mind you, I’m a good scholar. I can’t write much, but I can read anything. After leaving school, I went arrand-boy to a printer, and was there nine months. I had 4s. 6d. per week. Then I went to a lithographic printer’s, to turn a double-action press, but the work was too hard for a boy, and so I left it. I stopt there about nine weeks, and then I was out of work some time, and was living on my parents. I next went to work at a under-priced hatter’s, termed a ‘knobstick’s,’ but I was disgusted with the price paid for labour. I was a body-maker. I learned my first task in four hours, and could do it as well as those who’d been at it for months. I earn’d good money, but I didn’t like it, for it was boys keeping men out of employment who’d served their seven years to the trade. I left the hatter’s after I’d been there two seasons, and then I was out of work for some months. One day I went to a fair at the Tenter-ground, Whitechapel. While I was walking about the fair, I see a young man I knew standing as ‘doorsman’ at a profile-cutter’s, and he told me that another profile-cutter in the fair wanted an assistant, and thought I should do for it. He know’d I was handy at drawing, because he was at the hatter’s along with me, and I used to chalk the men’s likenesses on the shop door. So I went to this man and engaged. I had to talk at the door, or ‘tout,’ as we call it, and put or mount the likenesses on cards. I was rather backward at touting at first, but I got over that in the course of the day, and could patter like anything before the day was over. I had to shout out, ‘Step inside, ladies and gentlemen, and have a correct likeness taken for one penny.’ We did a very good business the two days of the fair that I attended, for I was not there till the second day. We took about 4l., but not all for penny likenesses, because, if we put the likeness on card we charged 2d., and if they was bronzed we charged 6d., and if they were framed complete, 1s. My pay was 4s. per day, and I was found in my keep.

“When the Tenter-ground fair was over, the profilist asked me if I’d travel with him, and I agreed upon stated terms. I was to have 4s. for working days, and 1s. and keep, and lodgings &c. for off-days. So we started next day for Luton ‘Statties,’ or Statues as it should be called. Luton is 32 miles from London, and this we walked, carrying with us the booth and every requisite for business the whole of the distance. I had not got my father’s leave; I didn’t ask for it, because I knew he’d object. We started for Luton at 12 o’clock in the day, and got there by 10 o’clock at night, and our load was not a very light un, for I’m sure the pair of us couldn’t have had less than 3 cwt. to carry. I was so beat that I dropt down about a mile before we got to the town, but a stranger came up and offered to carry my load for me the rest of the journey. I went to sleep on the bank, though it was so late at night. While I was sleeping the horse-patrol came along and woke me up. He told me I’d better get on, as I’d only a mile to go. I got up and proceeded on, and turning the corner of the road, I distinctly saw the lights of Luton, which enlivened me very much. I reached the town about a half-an-hour after my mate. We had a very good fair. Fossett was there with his performing birds and mice, and a nice concern it was; but since then he’s got a fust-rate circus. He travels the country still, and his concern is worthy a visit from any body. There was Frederick’s theatrical booth there, and a good many others of the same sort.

“We did very well, having no opposition, for we cut out a great many likenesses, and most of them twopenny ones. It’s a great place for the straw-plaiters, but there’s about seven women to one man. There was plenty of agricultural men and women there as well, and most of the John and Molls had their profiles cut. If a ploughman had his cut, he mostly gave it to his sweetheart, and if his girl had hers cut out, she returned the compliment.

“From Luton we went to Stourbitch fair, Cambridge, and there we had very bad luck, for we had to build out of the fair, alongside of another likeness-booth, and it was raining all the while. We cut out very few likenesses, for we didn’t take above a half a sovereign the whole three days.

“After leaving Stourbitch, we took the road for Peterborough-bridge fair. Being a cross-country road, there was no conveyance, and not liking the job of carrying our traps, we got a man who had a donkey and barrow to put our things aside of his own, and we agreed to pay him 4s. for the job. After we’d got about ten miles on the road, the donkey stopt short, and wouldn’t move a peg. We didn’t know what to do for the best. At last one of our party pulled off his hat and rattled a stick in it. The donkey pricked up his ears with fright, and darted off like one o’clock. After a bit he stopt again, and then we had to repeat the dose, and so we managed at last to get to Peterborough. We had out-and-out luck at this fair, for we cut out a great many likenesses, and a rare lot of ’em were bronzed. We took in the three days about 6l. This is supposed to be a great fair, and it’s supported principally by respectable people. Some of the people that came for profiles were quite gentlefolks, and they brought their families with them; they’re the people we like, because they believe we can cut a likeness, and stand still while we’re doing it. But the lower orders are no good to anybody, for when they enter the booth they get larking, and make derisions, and won’t stand still; and when that’s the case, we don’t take any trouble, but cut out anything, and say it’s like ’em, and then they often say, ‘Ah, it’s as much like me as it’s like him.’ But we always manage to get the money. There was a good many dashing young shop chaps came and had their portraits taken. They dress very fine, because they’ve got no other way to spend their money, for there’s no theatre or concert-rooms in the place.

“We went, after leaving Peterborough, to two or three other fairs. At last we got to a fair in Huntingdonshire, and there I quarrelled with my mate, because he caught me practising with his scissors; so I went into a stall next to where we stood and bought a penny pair; but the pair I picked out was a sixpenny pair by rights, for they had fell off a sixpenny card by accident. I practised with them, whenever I got a chance. We got on pretty well, too, at this fair. We took about 3l. in the three days. When we got to our lodgings—the first night was at a public house—I got practising again, and my mate snatched my scissors out of my hand, and never gave them to me any more till we got on to the road for another fair. When he gave them to me I asked what he took ’em away for, and he said I’d no business to practise in a public-house; and I told him I should do as I liked, and that I could cut as good a likeness as him, and I said, ‘Give me my money and I’ll go,’—for he’d only paid me a few shillings all the time I’d been with him—but he wouldn’t pay me, and so we worked two or three more fairs together. One day, going along the road, we stopped at a public-house to get some dinner. There was a little boy playing with a ship. ‘Now,’ says I, ‘I’ll show you I can cut a better likeness than you, or, at all events, a more saleable one.’ I took my scissors up for the first time in public, and cut out the little boy full length, with the ship in his hand and a little toy horse by his side, but could not bronze it, because I’d not practised the brush. I pencilled the little landscape scene behind, and when I showed it to my mate he was surprised, but he found many faults which he himself could not improve upon. I sold the likeness to the boy’s mother for a shilling, before his face, and of course he was nettled. After dinner we started off again, making for Bedford fair; we’d sent our things on by the rail, and we soon begun talking about my cutting out. He wondered how I’d acquired it, and when I told him I’d practised hours unbeknown to him, he agreed that I should be a regular partner—pay half the expenses, and have half of the profits, and begin the next fair. When we got there the fair was very dull, and business very bad; we only took 11s.; he cut out all the busts, and I did all the full-lengths. He was very bad at full-lengths, because he’d got no idea of proportion, but I could always get my proportions right. I could always draw when I was a boy, and cut out figures for night-shades. Many a time, when I was only eight years old, I’ve amused a whole room full of people with ‘Cobbler Jobson’ and ‘The Bridge is broken.’

“As things were so bad at Bedford, we agreed to come up to London, and not stop the other two days of the fair. When I came down stairs in the morning at 9 o’clock, I found my mate had bolted by the five-o’clock train, and left me in the lurch. He’d paid the reckoning, but he hadn’t left me a shilling of the money that he owed me. I had very little money in my pocket, because he’d been cash-taker, and so I had to tramp the whole fifty miles to London. When I reached London, I found out where he lived, and succeeded in getting my money within a few shillings. The next thing I did was to join another man in opening a shop in London, in the profile line—he found capital and I found talent, and very well we did. Most of our customers were working people, and often they’d come and have two or three likenesses, to send to their friends who’d emigrated, because they’d go easy in a letter. There was one old gentleman that I had come to me regularly every morning, for nearly three months, and had three penny likenesses cut out, for which he would always pay sixpence. He had an excellent profile, and was easy to cut out; he was one of those club-nosed old men, with a deep brow and double chin. One morning he brought all of them back that I had taken, and asked us what we’d give for the lot. I told him they were no use to me, for if I had them for specimens, people would say that I could cut only one sort of face, because they were all alike. After chaffing for about half an hour, he said he had brought them all back to have shirt collars cut, and to have them put on cards. We put them all on cards and he paid us a penny for each one, and when he took ’em away he said he was going to distribute them among his friends. One day a gentleman rode up and asked us how much we’d charge to cut him out, horse and all. I told him we hadn’t any paper large enough just then, but if he’d call another day we’d do it for 3s. 6d. He agreed to give it, and call the following morning. I knew I couldn’t cut out a horse perfect, so I bought a picture of a race-horse for 6d., and cut it out in black profile paper, and when he came the next day as he sat on his horse outside, so I cut his likeness, and when I’d finished it I called him in, and he declared that it was the best likeness, both of him and his horse, too, that he’d ever seen; and it appears he had his horse painted in oil. When he paid us, instead of giving us 3s. 6d. as he’d agreed, he gave us 5s. After being at this shop for five months, trade got so bad we had to leave. The first month we took on the average 16s. a-day, but it gradually decreased till at last we didn’t take more than about 2s. a-day. It was winter, to be sure. Before we left this shop we got another to go into, a mile or two off; but this turned out quite a failure, and we only kept on a month, for we never got higher than three or four shillings a-day, and the rent alone was 8s. per week. The next shop we took was in a low neighbourhood, and we got a comfortable living in it. I always did the cutting out, and my partner the touting. We stopped in this place nine weeks, and then things begun to get slack here, so we thought we’d try the suburbs, such as Highgate, Clapham, and Kensington, places three or four miles out. We used to hang specimens outside the public-houses where we took our lodgings, and engage a room to cut in. In this way we managed to get the winter over very comfortable, but my partner was taken ill just as we’d knocked off, and had to go in the hospital, and so I now thought I’d try what is termed ‘busking;’ that is, going into public-houses and cutting likenesses of the company. I often met with rough customers; they used to despise the ingenuity of the art, and say, ‘Why don’t you go to work? I’ve got a chap that ain’t so big as you, and he goes to work;’ and things of that kind. On Saturday nights I’d take such a thing as 6s. or 8s., principally in pence, but on other nights not more than 2s. or 2s. 6d.: these were mostly tap-room customers, but when they’d let me go in a parlour I could do a good night’s work in a little time, and the company would treat me better. I soon left off busking, because I didn’t like the people I had to do with, and it was such a trouble to get the money when they were half tipsy. I never worked in theatres, because I didn’t like the pushing about; but I’ve known a man to get a good living at the theatres and steam-boats alone. I took to steam-boats myself when I left off public-houses, working mostly in the Gravesend boats on the Sunday, and the ha’penny boats on the week-days. I’ve taken before now 14s. of a Sunday, and I used to vary in the ha’penny boats from 2s. to 4s. a-day.

“I always attend Greenwich-park regularly at holiday times, but never have a booth at the fair, because I can do better moving about. I have a frame of specimens tied round a tree, and get a boy to hold the paper and cards. At this I’ve taken as much as 35s. in one day, and though there was lots of cheap photographic booths down there last Easter Monday, in spite of ’em all I took above 8s. 6d. in the afternoon. Battersea-fields and Chalk-farm used to be out-and-out spots on a Sunday, at one time. I’ve often taken such a thing as 30s. on a Sunday afternoon and evening in the summer. After I left the steam-boats I built myself a small booth, and travelled the country to fairs, ‘statties,’ and feasts, and got a very comfortable living; but now the cheap photographs have completely done up profiles, so I’m compelled to turn to that. But I think I shall learn a trade, for that’ll be better than either of them.

“The best work I’ve had of late years has been at the teetotal festivals. I was at Aylesbury with them, at St. Alban’s, Luton, and Gore House. At Gore House last August, when the ‘Bands of Hope’ were there, I took about a pound.”

A cheerful blind man, well known to all crossing Waterloo or Hungerford-bridges, gave me the following account of his figure-cutting:—

“I had the measles when I was seven, and became blind; but my sight was restored by Dr. Jeffrey, at old St. George’s Hospital. After that I had several relapses into total blindness in consequence of colds, and since 1840 I have been quite blind, excepting that I can partially distinguish the sun and the gas-lights, and such-like, with the left eye only. I am now 31, and was brought up to house-painting. When I was last attacked with blindness I was obliged to go into St. Martin’s workhouse, where I underwent thirteen operations in two years. When I came out of the workhouse I played the German flute in the street, but it was only a noise, not music, sir. Then I sold boot-laces and tapes in the street, and averaged 5s. a-week by it—certainly not more. Next I made little wooden tobacco-stoppers in the street, in the shape of legs—they’re called ‘legs.’ The first day I started in that line—it was in Tottenham-court-road—I was quite elated, for I made half-a-crown. I next tried it by St. Clement’s-church, but I found that I cut my hands so with the knives and files, that I had to give it up, and I then took up with the trade of cutting out profiles of animals and birds, and grotesque human figures, in card. I established myself soon after I began this trade by the Victoria-gate, Bayswater; that was the best pitch I ever had—one day I took 15s., and I averaged 30s. a-week for six weeks. At last the inspector of police ordered me off. After that I was shoved about by the police, such crowds gathered round me, until I at length got leave to carry on my business by Waterloo-bridge; that’s seven years ago. I remained there till the opening of Hungerford-bridge, in May 1845. I sit there cold or fine, winter or summer, every day but Sunday, or if I’m ill. I often hear odd remarks from people crossing the bridge. In winter time, when I’ve been cold and hungry, and so poor that I couldn’t get my clothes properly mended, one has said, ‘Look at that poor blind man there;’ and another (and oft enough, too) has answered, ‘Poor blind man!—he has better clothes and more money than you or me; it’s all done to excite pity!’ I can generally tell a gentleman’s or lady’s voice, if they’re the real thing. I can tell a purse-proud man’s voice, too. He says, in a domineering, hectoring way, as an ancient Roman might speak to his slave, ‘Ah, ha! my good fellow! how do you sell these things?’ Since January last, I may have averaged 8s. a-week—that’s the outside. The working and the middling classes are my best friends. I know of no other man in my particular line, and I’ve often inquired concerning any.”

The next in order are the Writers without Hands and the Chalkers on Flag-stones.

A man of 61, born in the crippled state he described, tall, and with an intelligent look and good manners, gave me this account:—

“I was born without hands—merely the elbow of the right arm and the joint of the wrist of the left. I have rounded stumps. I was born without feet also, merely the ankle and heel, just as if my feet were cut off close within the instep. My father was a farmer in Cavan county, Ireland, and gave me a fair education. He had me taught to write. I’ll show you how, sir.” (Here he put on a pair of spectacles, using his stumps, and then holding the pen on one stump, by means of the other he moved the two together, and so wrote his name in an old-fashioned hand.) “I was taught by an ordinary schoolmaster. I served an apprenticeship of seven years to a turner, near Cavan, and could work well at the turning, but couldn’t chop the wood very well. I handled my tools as I’ve shown you I do my pen. I came to London in 1814, having a prospect of getting a situation in the India-house; but I didn’t get it, and waited for eighteen months, until my funds and my father’s help were exhausted, and I then took to making fancy screens, flower-vases, and hand-racks in the streets. I did very well at them, making 15s. to 20s. a-week in the summer, and not half that, perhaps not much more than a third, in the winter. I continue this work still, when my health permits, and I now make handsome ornaments, flower-vases, &c. for the quality, and have to work before them frequently, to satisfy them. I could do very well but for ill-health. I charge from 5s. to 8s. for hand-screens, and from 7s. 6d. to 15s. for flower-vases. Some of the quality pay me handsomely—some are very near. I have done little work in the streets this way, except in very fine weather. Sometimes I write tickets in the street at a halfpenny each. The police never interfere unless the thoroughfare is obstructed badly. My most frequent writing is, ‘Naked came I into the world, and naked shall I return.’ ‘The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ To that I add my name, the date sometimes, and a memorandum that it was the writing of a man born without hands or feet. When I’m not disturbed, I do pretty well, getting 1s. 6d. a-day; but that’s an extra day. The boys are a great worry to me. Working people are my only friends at the writing, and women the best. My best pitches are Tottenham-court-road and the West-end thoroughfares. There’s three men I know who write without hands. They’re in the country chiefly, travelling. One man writes with his toes, but chiefly in the public-houses, or with showmen. I consider that I am the only man in the world who is a handicraftsman without hands or feet. I am married, and have a grown-up family. Two of my sons are in America, one in Australia, one a sailor, the others are emigrants on the coast of Africa, and one a cabinet-maker in London—all fine fellows, well made. I had fifteen in all. My father and mother, too, were a handsome, well-made couple.”

A spare, sad-looking man, very poorly dressed, gave me the following statement. He is well-known by his coloured drawings upon the flag-stones:—

“I was usher in a school for three years, and had a paralytic stroke, which lost me my employment, and was soon the cause of great poverty. I was fond of drawing, and colouring drawings, when a child, using sixpenny boxes of colours, or the best my parents could procure me, but I never had lessons. I am a self-taught man. When I was reduced to distress, and indeed to starvation, I thought of trying some mode of living, and remembering having seen a man draw mackerel on the flags in the streets of Bristol 20 years ago, I thought I would try what I could do that way. I first tried my hand in the New Kent-road, attempting a likeness of Napoleon, and it was passable, though I can do much better now; I made half-a-crown the first day. I saw a statement in one of your letters that I was making 1l. a-day, and was giving 14d. for a shilling. I never did: on the contrary, I’ve had a pint of beer given to me by publicans for supplying them with copper. It doesn’t hurt me, so that you need not contradict it unless you like. The Morning Chronicle letters about us are frequently talked over in the lodging-houses. It’s 14 or 15 years since I started in the New Kent-road, and I’ve followed up ‘screeving,’ as it’s sometimes called, or drawing in coloured chalks on the flag-stones, until now. I improved with practice. It paid me well; but in wet weather I have made nothing, and have had to run into debt. A good day’s work I reckon 8s. or 10s. A very good day’s work? I should be glad to get it now. I have made 15s. in a day on an extraordinary occasion, but never more, except at Greenwich fair, where I’ve practised these 14 years. I don’t suppose I ever cleared 1l. a-week all the year round at screeving. For 1l. a-week I would honestly work my hardest. I have a wife and two children. I would draw trucks or be a copying clerk, or do anything for 1l. a-week to get out of the streets. Or I would like regular employment as a painter in crayons. Of all my paintings the Christ’s heads paid the best, but very little better than the Napoleon’s heads. The Waterloo-bridge-road was a favourite spot of mine for a pitch. Euston-square is another. These two were my best. I never chalked ‘starving’ on the flags, or anything of that kind. There are two imitators of me, but they do badly. I don’t do as well as I did 10 years ago, but I’m making 15s. a-week all the year through.”

V.—EXHIBITORS OF TRAINED ANIMALS. — The Happy Family Exhibitor. — The Original Happy Family. — Exhibitor of Birds and Mice.

“ Garret-Masters. ” — The Doll’s-Eye Maker.

The Cabinet-makers, socially as well as commercially considered, consist, like all other operatives, of two distinct classes, that is to say, of society and non-society men, or, in the language of political economy, of those whose wages are regulated by custom and those whose earnings are determined by competition. The former class numbers between 600 and 700 of the trade, and the latter between 4000 and 5000. As a general rule I may remark, that I find the society-men of every trade comprise about one-tenth of the whole. Hence it follows, that if the non-society men are neither so skilful nor so well-conducted as the others, at least they are quite as important a body, from the fact that they constitute the main portion of the trade. The transition from the one class to the other is, however, in most cases, of a very disheartening character. The difference between the tailor at the west end, working for better shops at the better prices, and the poor wretch starving at starvation wages for the sweaters and slop-shops at the east end, has already been pointed out. The same marked contrast was also shown to exist between the society and non-society boot and shoemakers. The carpenters and joiners told the same story. There were found society men renting houses of their own—some paying as much as 70l. a-year—and the non-society men overworked and underpaid, so that a few weeks’ sickness reduced them to absolute pauperism. Nor, I regret to say, can any other tale be told of the cabinet-makers; except it be, that the competitive men in this trade are even in a worse position than any other. I have already portrayed to the reader the difference between the homes of the two classes—the comfort and well-furnished abodes of the one, and the squalor and bare walls of the other. But those who wish to be impressed with the social advantages of a fairly-paid class of mechanics should attend a meeting of the Wood-carvers’ Society. On the first floor of a small private house in Tottenham-street, Tottenham-court-road, is, so to speak, the museum of the working-men belonging to this branch of the cabinet-makers. The walls of the back-room are hung round with plaster casts of some of the choicest specimens of the arts, and in the front room the table is strewn with volumes of valuable prints and drawings in connexion with the craft. Round this table are ranged the members of the society—some forty or fifty were there on the night of my attendance—discussing the affairs of the trade. Among the collection of books may be found, “The Architectural Ornaments and Decorations of Cottingham,” “The Gothic Ornaments” of Pugin, Tatham’s “Greek Relics,” Raphael’s “Pilaster Ornaments of the Vatican,” Le Pautre’s “Designs,” and Baptiste’s “Collection of Flowers,” large size; while among the casts are articles of the same choice description. The objects of this society are, in the words of the preface to the printed catalogue, “to enable wood-carvers to co-operate for the advancement of their art, and by forming a collection of books, prints, and drawings, to afford them facilities for self-improvement; also, by the diffusion of information among its members, to assist them in the exercise of their art, as well as to enable them to obtain employment.” The society does not interfere in the regulation of wages in any other way than, by the diffusion of information among its members, to assist them in the exercise of their art, as well as to enable them to obtain employment; so that both employers and employed may, by becoming members, promote their own and each other’s interests. The collection is now much enlarged, and with the additions that have been made to it, offers aid to the members which in many cases is invaluable. As a means of facilitating the use of this collection, the opportunities of borrowing from it have been made as general as possible. The meetings of the society are held at a place where attendance is unaccompanied by expense; and they are, therefore, says the preface, “free from all objection on account of inducements to exceed the time required for business.” All this appears to be in the best possible taste, and the attention of the society being still directed to its improvement, assuredly gives the members, as they say, “good reason to hope that it will become one of which the wood-carver may be proud, as affording valuable assistance, both in the design and execution of any style of wood-carving.” In the whole course of my investigations I have never experienced more gratification than I did on the evening of my visit to this society. The members all gave evidence, both in manner and appearance, of the refining character of their craft: and it was indeed a hearty relief from the scenes of squalor, misery, dirt, vice, ignorance, and discontent, with which these inquiries too frequently bring one into connexion, to find one’s self surrounded with an atmosphere of beauty, refinement, comfort, intelligence, and ease.

The public, generally, are deplorably misinformed as to the character and purpose of trade societies. The common impression is that they are combinations of working-men, instituted and maintained solely with the view of exacting an exorbitant rate of wages from their employers, and that they are necessarily connected with strikes, and with sundry other savage and silly means of attaining this object. It is my duty, however, to make known that the rate of wages which such societies are instituted to uphold has, with but few exceptions, been agreed upon at a conference of both masters and men, and that in almost every case I find the members as strongly opposed to strikes, as a means of upholding them, as the public themselves. But at all events the maintenance of the standard rate of wages is not the sole object of such societies—the majority of them being organised as much for the support of the sick and aged as for the regulation of the price of labour; and even in those societies whose efforts are confined to the latter purpose alone, a considerable sum is devoted annually for the subsistence of their members when out of work. The general cabinet-makers, I have already shown, have contributed towards this object as much as 1000l. per annum for many years past. It is not generally known how largely the community is indebted to the trade and friendly societies of the working classes dispersed throughout the kingdom, or how much expense the public is saved by such means in the matter of poor-rates alone.

According to the last Government returns there are at present in England, Scotland, and Ireland, upwards of 33,000 such societies, 14,000 of which are enrolled and 8000 unenrolled—the remaining 11,000 being secret societies, such as the Odd Fellows, Foresters, Druids, Old Friends, and Rechabites. The number of members belonging to these 33,000 societies is more than three millions. The gross annual income of the entire associations is 4,980,000l. and their accumulated capital 11,360,000l. The working people of this country, and I believe of this country alone, contribute therefore to the support of their own poor nearly five millions of money every year, which is some thousands of pounds more than was dispensed in parochial relief throughout England and Wales in 1848. Hence it may be truly said, that the benefits conferred by the trade and friendly societies of the working classes are not limited to the individuals receiving them, but are participated in by every ratepayer in the kingdom, for were there no such institutions the poor-rates must necessarily be doubled.

I have been thus explicit on the subject of trade societies in general, because I know there exists in the public mind a strong prejudice against such institutions, and because it is the fact of belonging to some such society which invariably distinguishes the better class of workmen from the worse. The competitive men, or cheap workers, seldom or never are members of any association, either enrolled or unenrolled. The consequence is, that when out of work, or disabled from sickness or old age, they are left to the parish to support. It is the slop-workers of the different trades—the cheap men or non-society hands—who constitute the great mass of paupers in this country. And here lies the main social distinction between the workmen who belong to societies and those who do not—the one maintain their own poor, the others are left to the mercy of the parish. The wages of the competitive men are cut down to a bare subsistence, so that, being unable to save anything from their earnings, a few days’ incapacity from labour drives them to the workhouse for relief. In the matter of machinery, not only is the cost of working the engine, but the wear and tear of the machine, considered as a necessary part of the expense of production. With the human machine, however, it is different, slop-wages being sufficient to defray only the cost of keeping it at work, but not to compensate for the wear and tear of it. Under the allowance system of the old poor-law, wages, it is well known, were reduced far below subsistence-point, and the workmen were left to seek parish relief for the remainder; and so in the slop part of every trade, the underpaid workmen when sick or aged are handed over to the state to support.

As an instance of the truth of the above remarks I subjoin the following statement, which has been furnished to me by the Chairmakers’ Society concerning their outgoings:—

“The objects which the London Chairmakers have in view by associating in a trade society,” says the written statement from which the above account is extracted, “is to insure, as near as possible, one uniform price for the work they execute, so that the employer shall have a guarantee in making his calculations that he will not be charged more or less than his neighbours, who employ the same class of men: to assist their members in obtaining employment, and a just remuneration for the work they perform: to insure their tools against fire: to provide for their funerals in the event of death: and to relieve their members when unemployed or in sickness—the latter being effected by paying persons to collect voluntary subscriptions for invalid members, such subscriptions producing on an average 5l. in each case. The members have, moreover, other modes of assisting each other when in difficulties.”

I may as well here subjoin the statement I have received from this society concerning the circumstances affecting their business.

“Our trade,” say they, in a written communication to me, “has suffered very materially from a change which took place about 30 years ago in the system of work. We were at that time chiefly employed by what we term ‘trade-working masters,’ who supplied the upholsterers with the frames of chairs and sofas; but since then we have obtained our work directly from the sellers. At first the change was rather beneficial than otherwise. The employer and his salesman, however, have now, in the greater number of instances, no knowledge of the manufacturing part of the business, and this is very detrimental to our interest, owing to their being unacquainted with the value of the labour part of the articles we make. Moreover, the salesman sends all the orders he can out of doors to be made by the middlemen, though the customer is led to believe that the work is executed on the premises, whereas only a portion of it is made at home, and that chiefly the odd and out-of-the-way work, because the sending of such work out of doors would not answer the end of cheapness. The middleman, who executes the work away from the premises, subdivides the labour to such an extent that he is enabled to get the articles made much cheaper, as well as to employ both unskilful workmen and apprentices.

“Placed in the position where the employer gets the credit of paying us the legitimate price for our labour, it would appear that we have no cause of complaint; but, owing to the system of things before stated, as well as to the number of linendrapers, carpet-makers, and others, who have recently entered the trade without having any practical knowledge of the business, together with the casualty of our employment, our social position has become scarcely any better, or so good, as that of the unskilful or the dissipated workman, while, from the many demands of our fellow-operatives upon us, in the shape of pecuniary assistance, we have a severe struggle to maintain anything like a respectable footing in the community. The principal source of regret with us is, that the public have no knowledge of the quality of the articles they buy. The sellers, too, from their want of practical acquaintance with the manufacturing part of the business, have likewise an injurious effect upon our interests, instead of seconding our efforts to keep up a creditable position in society.

“The subjoined is the amount of the capital of our society at the present time:—

Such, then, is the state of the society men belonging to the cabinet-makers’ trade. These, as I before said, constitute that portion of the workmen whose wages are regulated by custom, and it now only remains for me to set forth the state of those whose earnings are determined by competition. Here we shall find that the wages a few years since were from three to four hundred per cent better than they are at present, 20s. having formerly been the price paid for making that for which the operatives now receive only 5s., and this notwithstanding that the number of hands in the London trade from 1831 to 1841 declined 33 per cent relatively to the rest of the population. Nor can it be said that this extraordinary depreciation in the value of the cabinet-makers’ labour has arisen from any proportionate decrease in the quantity of work to be done. The number of houses built in the metropolis has of late been considerably on the increase. Since 1839 there have been 200 miles of new streets formed in London, no less than 6405 new dwellings having been erected annually since that time: and as it is but fair to assume that the majority of these new houses must have required new furniture, it is clear that it is impossible to account for the decline in the wages of the trade in question upon the assumption of an equal decline in the quantity of work. How, then, are we to explain the fact that, while the hands have decreased 33 per cent, and work increased at a considerable rate, wages a few years ago were 300 per cent better than they are at present? The solution of the problem will be found in the extraordinary increase that has taken place within the last 20 years of what are called “garret-masters” in the cabinet trade. These garret-masters are a class of small “trade-working masters,” supplying both capital and labour. They are in manufacture what the peasant-proprietors are in agriculture, their own employers and their own workmen. There is, however, this one marked distinction between the two classes,—the garret-master cannot, like the peasant-proprietor, eat what he produces: the consequence is, that he is obliged to convert each article into food immediately he manufactures it, no matter what the state of the market may be. The capital of the garret-master being generally sufficient to find him in the materials for the manufacture of only one article at a time, and his savings being barely enough for his subsistence while he is engaged in putting those materials together, he is compelled the moment the work is completed to part with it for whatever he can get. He cannot afford to keep it even a day, for to do so is generally to remain a day unfed. Hence, if the market be at all slack, he has to force a sale by offering his goods at the lowest possible price. What wonder, then, that the necessities of such a class of individuals should have created a special race of employers, known by the significant name of “slaughter-house men?”—or that these, being aware of the inability of the garret-masters to hold out against any offer, no matter how slight a remuneration it affords for their labour, should continually lower and lower their prices until the entire body of the competitive portion of the cabinet trade is sunk in utter destitution and misery? Moreover, it is well known how strong is the stimulus among peasant-proprietors, or indeed any class working for themselves, to extra production. So it is, indeed, with the garret-masters; their industry is indeed almost incessant, and hence a greater quantity of work is turned out by them, and continually forced into the market, than there would otherwise be. What though there be a brisk and a slack season in the cabinet-makers’ trade, as in the majority of others? Slack or brisk, the garret-master must produce the same excessive quantity of goods. In the hope of extricating himself from his overwhelming poverty, he toils on, producing more and more; and yet the more he produces the more hopeless does his position become, for the greater the stock that he thrusts into the market the lower does the price of his labour fall, until at last he and his own family work for less than he himself could earn, a few years back, by his own unaided labour.

Another cause of the necessity of the garret-master to part with his goods as soon as made is the large size of the articles he manufactures, and the consequent cost of conveying them from slaughter-house to slaughter-house till a purchaser be found. For this purpose a van is frequently hired; and the consequence is, that he cannot hold out against the slaughterer’s offer, even for an hour, without increasing the expense of carriage, and so virtually decreasing his gains. This is so well known at the slaughter-houses, that if a man, after seeking in vain for a fair remuneration for his work, is goaded by his necessities to call at a shop a second time to accept a price which he had previously refused, he seldom obtains what was first offered him. Sometimes when he has been ground down to the lowest possible sum, he is paid late on a Saturday night with a cheque, and forced to give the firm a liberal discount for cashing it.

For a more detailed account, however, of the iniquities practised upon this class of operatives, I refer the reader to the statements given below. It will be there seen that all the modes by which work can be produced cheap are in full operation. The labour of apprentices and children is the prevailing means of production. I heard of one small trade-working master who had as many as eleven apprentices at work for him; and wherever the operative is blessed with a family they all work, even from 6 years old. The employment of any undue number of apprentices also tends to increase the very excess of hands from which the trade is suffering; and thus it is, that the lower wages become, the lower still they are reduced. There are very few—some told me there were none, but there are a few who work as journeymen for little masters; but these men become little masters in their turn, or they must starve in idleness, for their employment is precarious. These men have no time for social intercommunication: the struggle to live absorbs all their energies, and confines all their aspirations to that one endeavour. Their labour is devoted, with the rarest exceptions, to the “slaughter-houses, linendrapers, ’polsterers, or warehouses.” By all these names I heard the shopkeepers who deal in furniture of all kinds, as well as drapery goods, designated.

These men work in their own rooms, in Spitalfields and Bethnal-green; and sometimes two or three men in different branches occupy one apartment, and work together there. They are a sober class of men, but seem so perfectly subdued by circumstances, that they cannot or do not struggle against the system which several of them told me they knew was undoing them.

The subdivisions of this trade I need not give, they are as numerous as the articles of the cabinet-maker’s calling.

I have mentioned that the black houses, or linendrapers at the west end of London, were principally supplied from the east end. In the neighbourhood of Tottenham-court-road and Oxford-street, for instance, most of my readers will have had their attention attracted by the dust-coloured appearance of some poor worker in wood carrying along his skeleton of an easy chair, or a sofa, or a couch, to dispose of in some shop. Often, too, a carter has to be employed for the same purpose, at the rate of 1s. 6d. an hour; and thus two hours will exhaust the very fullest value of a long day’s labour. From a furniture-carter of this description I received some most shocking details of having to “busk” it, as this taking about goods for sale is called by those in the trade.

From a pale, feeble-looking man whom I met on a Saturday evening at the west end, carrying a mahogany chiffonier, I had the following statement:—

GARRET-MASTER; OR CHEAP FURNITURE MAKER.

[From a Sketch.]

“I have dragged this chiffonier with me,” he said, “from Spitalfields, and have been told to call again in two hours (it was then half-past 7). I am too tired to drag it to another linendraper’s, and indeed I shouldn’t have so good a chance there; for if we go late, the manager considers we’ve been at other places, and he’ll say, ‘You needn’t bring me what others have refused.’ I was brought up as a general hand at ——, but was never in society, which is a great disadvantage. I feel that now. I used to make my 25s. or 28s. a-week six or seven years back; but then I fell out of employ, and worked at chair-making for a slaughter-house, and so got into the system, and now I can’t get out of it. I have no time to look about me, as, if I’m idle, I can’t get bread for my family. I have a wife and two children. They’re too young to do anything; but I can’t afford to send them to school, except every now and then 1d. or 2d. a-week, and so they may learn to read, perhaps. The anxiety I suffer is not to be told. I’ve nothing left to pawn now; and if I don’t sell this chiffonier I must take it back, and must go back to a house bare of everything, except, perhaps, 3s. or 2s. 6d. my wife may have earned by ruining her health for a tailor’s sweater; and 1s. 6d. of that must go for rent. I ought to have 2l. for this chiffonier, for it’s superior mahogany to the run of such things; but I ask only 35s., and perhaps may be bid 28s., and get 30s.; and it may be sold, perhaps, by the linendraper for 3l. 3s. or 3l. 10s. Of course we’re obliged to work in the slightest manner possible; but, good or bad, there’s the same fault found with the article. I have already lost 3½ hours; and there’s my wife anxiously looking for my return to buy bread and a bit of beast’s head for to-morrow. It’s hard to go without a bit o’ meat on Sundays; and, indeed, I must sell at whatever price—it don’t matter, and that the linendraper depends upon.”

I now subjoin a statement of a garret-master—a maker of loo tables—who was endeavouring to make a living by a number of apprentices:—

“I’m now 41,” he said, “and for the last ten or twelve years have been working for a linendraper who keeps a slaughter-house. Before that I was in a good shop, Mr. D——’s, and was a general hand, as we were in the fair trade. I have often made my 50s. a-week on good work of any kind: now, with three apprentices to help me, I make only 25s. Work grew slack; and rather than be doing nothing, as I’d saved a little money, I made loo tables, and sold them to a linendraper, a dozen years back or so, and so somehow I got into the trade. For tables that, eighteen years ago, I had in a good shop 30s. for making, now 5s. is paid; but that’s only in a slaughterer’s own factory, when he has one. I’ve been told often enough by a linendraper, ‘Make an inferior article, so as it’s cheap: if it comes to pieces in a month, what’s that to you or me?’ Now, a 4-foot loo is an average; and if for profit and labour—and it’s near two days’ work—I put on 7s., I’m bid 5s. less. I’ve been bid less than the stuff, and have on occasions been forced to take it. That was four years ago; and I then found I couldn’t possibly live by my own work, and I had a wife and four children to keep; so I got some apprentices. I have now three, and two of them are stiff fellows of 18, and can do a deal of work. For a 4-foot loo table I have only 1l., though the materials cost from 11s. to 13s., and it’s about two days’ work. There’s not a doubt of it that the linendrapers have brought bad work into the market, and have swamped the good. For work that, ten or twelve years ago, I had 3l. 5s. to 3l. 10s. from them, I have now 30s. Of course, it’s inferior in quality in proportion, but it doesn’t pay me half as well. I know that men like me are cutting one another’s throats by competition. Fourteen years ago we ought to have made a stand against this system; but, then, we must live.”

A pale young man, working in a room with two others, but in different branches, gave me the following account:—

“I have been two years making looking-glass frames. Before that I was in the general cabinet line, but took to this when I was out of work. I make frames only; the slaughter-houses put in the glasses themselves. If I had other work I couldn’t afford to lose time going from one to another that I wasn’t so quick at. I make all sizes of frames, from nine-sevens to twenty-four-eighteens (nine inches by seven, and twenty-four inches by eighteen). Nine-sevens are most in demand; and the slaughter-houses give 10s. 6d. a-dozen for them. Two years back they gave 15s. All sizes has fallen 3s. to 4s. a-dozen. I find all the material. It’s mahogany veneered over deal. There’s only five or six slaughter-houses in my way; but I serve the Italians or Jews, and they serve the slaughter-houses. There’s no foreigners employed as I’m employed. It’s not foreign competition as harms us—it’s home. I almost ask more than I mean to take, for I’m always bid less than a fair price, and so we haggle on to a bargain. The best weeks I have had I cleared 25s.; but in slack times, when I can hardly sell at all, only 12s. Carrying the goods for sale is such a loss of time. Things are very bad now; but I must go on making, and get a customer when trade is brisker if I can. Glass has rose 1s. a-foot, and that’s made a slack in the trade, for my trade depends greatly on the glass trade. I know of no women employed in my trade, and no apprentices. We are all little masters.”

I shall now proceed to the other branch of the trade. The remarks I have made concerning the wretched social condition and earnings of fancy cabinet-makers who are in society, apply even more strongly to the non-society men. The society men are to be found chiefly in Clerkenwell; the non-society men in Spitalfields and Bethnal Green. With these unfortunate workmen there is yet a lower deep. The underpaid men of Clerkenwell work generally to order, if the payment be never so inadequate. But the still more underpaid men of Spitalfields work almost universally on speculation. The Spitalfields cabinet-maker finds his own material, which he usually purchases of the great cabinet-makers or the pianoforte-makers, being the veneers which are the refuse of their work. The supply of the east-end warehousemen is derived from little masters—men who work at their own abodes, and have the assistance of their wives and children. It is very rarely that they, or their equally underpaid fellows in the general cabinet trade, employ an active journeyman. Almost every man in the trade works on his own account, finds his own material, and goes “on the busk to the slaughter-houses” for the chance of a customer.

I found the fancy cabinet-makers certainly an uninformed class, but patient, temperate, and resigned. Some few could neither read nor write, and their families were growing up as uninformed as the parents. The hawking from door to door of workboxes made by some of the men themselves, their wives assisting them with hawking, was far commoner than it is now; but it is still practised to a small extent.

I called on an old couple to whom I was referred, as to one of the few parties employed in working for the men who supplied the warehouses. The man’s appearance was gaunt and wretched. He had been long unshorn; and his light blue eyes had that dull, half-glazed look, which is common to the old when spirit-broken and half-fed. His room, a small garret in Spitalfields, for which he paid 1s. 3d. a-week, was bare of furniture, except his work-bench and two chairs, which were occupied by his wife, who was at work lining the boxes her husband was making. A blanket rolled up was the poor couple’s bed. The wife was ten years younger than her husband. She was very poorly clad in an old rusty black gown, tattered here and there; but she did not look very feeble.

“I am 63,” the man said, and he looked 80, “and was apprenticed in my youth to the fancy cabinet trade. I could make 4l. 4s. a-week at it by working long hours when I was out of my time, forty-two years back. I have worked chiefly on workboxes. I didn’t save money—I was foolish; but it was a hard-living and a hard-drinking time. I’m sorry for it now. Thirty years ago things weren’t quite so good, but still very good; and so they were twenty years back. But since the slaughter-houses came in, men like me has been starving. Why here, sir, for a rosewood workbox like this, which I shall get 6d. for making, I used to give a brother of mine 6s. 6d. for making twenty years ago. I’ve been paid 22s. 6d. years ago for what I now get 2s. 6d. for. The man who employs me now works for a slaughter-house; and he must grind me down, or he couldn’t serve a slaughter-house cheap enough. He finds materials, and I find tools and glue; and I have 6s. a-dozen for making these boxes, and I can only make a dozen a-week, and the glue and other odds and ends for them costs me 6d. a-dozen. That, with 9d. or 10d. a-week, or 1s., that my wife may make, as she helps me in lining, is all we have to live on. We live entirely on tea and bread and butter, when we can get butter; never any change—tea, and nothing else all day; never a bit of meat on a Sunday. As for beer, I haven’t spent 4s. on it these last four years. When I’m not at work for a little master, I get stuff of one, and make a few boxes on my own account, and carry them out to sell. I have often to go three or four miles with them; for there’s a house near Tottenham-court-road that will take a few from me, generally out of charity. When I’m past work, or can’t meet with any, there’s nothing but the workhouse for me.”

The decline which has taken place within the last twenty years in the wages of the operative cabinet-makers of London is so enormous, and, moreover, it seems so opposed to the principles of political economy, that it becomes of the highest importance in an inquiry like the present to trace out the circumstances to which this special depreciation is to be attributed. It has been before shown that the number of hands belonging to the London cabinet trade decreased between 1831 and 1841 33 per cent in comparison with the rest of the metropolitan population; and that, notwithstanding this falling off, the workman’s wages in 1831 were at least 400 per cent better than they are at present; 20s. having formerly been paid for the making of articles for which now only 5s. are given. To impress this fact, however, more strongly upon the reader’s mind, I will cite here a few of many instances of depreciation that have come to my knowledge. “Twenty years ago,” said a workman in the fancy cabinet line, “I had 6d. an inch for the making of 20-inch desks of solid mahogany; that’s 10s. for the entire article: now I get 2s. 3d. for the same thing. Smaller desks used to average us 6s. each for wages: now they don’t bring us more than 1s. Ladies’ 12-inch workboxes twenty years ago were 3s. 6d. and 4s. a-piece making; now they are 5d. for the commoner sort and 7d. for those with better work.” “I don’t understand per cents,” said another workman, “but this I do know, the prices that I get have within this twenty years fallen from 4s. to 5d., and in some cases to 4½d.”

Here, then, we find that wages in the competitive portion of the cabinet trade—that is among the non-society hands—(the wages of the society men I have before explained are regulated, or rather fixed by custom)—were twenty years ago 400 per cent better in some cases, and in others no less than 900 per cent higher than they are at present, and this while the number of workmen has decreased as much as one-third relatively to the rest of the population. How, then, is this extraordinary diminution in the price of labour to be accounted for? Certainly not on the natural assumption that the quantity of work has declined in a still greater proportion than the number of hands to do it, for it has also been proved that the number of new houses built annually in the metropolis, and therefore the quantity of new furniture required, has of late years increased very considerably.

In the cabinet trade, then, we find a collection of circumstances at variance with that law of supply and demand by which many suppose that the rate of wages is invariably determined. Wages, it is said, depend upon the demand and supply of labour; and it is commonly assumed that they cannot be affected by anything else. That they are, however, subject to other influences, the history of the cabinet trade for the last twenty years is a most convincing proof, for there we find, that while the quantity of work, or in other words, the demand for labour, has increased, and the supply decreased, wages, instead of rising, have suffered a heavy decline. By what means, then, is this reduction in the price of labour to be explained? What other circumstance is there affecting the remuneration for work, of which economists have usually omitted to take cognizance? The answer is, that wages depend as much on the distribution of labour as on the demand and supply of it. Assuming a certain quantity of work to be done, the amount of remuneration coming to each of the workmen engaged must, of course, be regulated, not only by the number of hands, but by the proportion of labour done by them respectively; that is to say, if there be work enough to employ the whole of the operatives for sixty hours a-week, and if two-thirds of the hands are supplied with sufficient to occupy them ninety hours in the same space of time, then one-third of the trade must be thrown fully out of employment: thus proving that there may be surplus labour without any increase of the population. It may, therefore, be safely asserted, that any system of labour which tends to make the members of a craft produce a greater quantity of work than usual, tends at the same time to over-populate the trade as certainly as an increase of workmen. This law may be summed up briefly in the expression that over-work makes under-pay.

Hence the next point in the inquiry is as to the means by which the productiveness of operatives is capable of being extended. There are many modes of effecting this. Some of these have been long known to students of political economy, while others have been made public for the first time in these letters. Under the former class are included the division and co-operation of labour, as well as the “large system of production;” and to the latter belongs “the strapping system,” by which men are made to get through four times as much work as usual, and which I have before described. But the most effectual means of increasing the productiveness of labourers is found to consist, not in any system of supervision, however cogent, nor in any limitation of the operations performed by the work-people to the smallest possible number, nor in the apportionment of the different parts of the work to the different capabilities of the operatives, but in connecting the workman’s interest directly with his labour; that is to say, by making the amount of his earnings depend upon the quantity of work done by him. This is ordinarily effected in manufacture by means of what is called piece-work. Almost all who work by the day, or for a fixed salary—that is to say, those who labour for the gain of others, not for their own—have, it has been well remarked, “no interest in doing more than the smallest quantity of work that will pass as a fulfilment of the mere terms of their engagement.” Owing to the insufficient interest which day-labourers have in the result of their labour, there is a natural tendency in such labour to be extremely inefficient—a tendency only to be overcome by vigilant superintendance (such as is carried on under the strapping system among the joiners) on the part of the persons who are interested in the result. The master’s eye is notoriously the only security to be relied on. But superintend them as you will, day labourers are so much inferior to those who work by the piece, that, as we before said, the latter system is practised in all industrial occupations where the work admits of being put out in definite portions, without involving the necessity of too troublesome a surveillance to guard against inferiority (or scamping) in the execution. But if the labourer at piece-work is made to produce a greater quantity than at day-work, and this solely by connecting his own interest with that of his employer, how much more largely must the productiveness of workmen be increased when labouring wholly on their own account! Accordingly, it has been invariably found, that whenever the operative unites in himself the double function of capitalist and labourer, making up his own materials or working on his own property, his productiveness single-handed is considerably greater than can be attained under the large system of production, where all the arts and appliances of which extensive capital can avail itself are brought into operation.

Of the industry of working masters or trading operatives in manufactures there are as yet no authentic accounts. We have, however, ample records concerning the indefatigability of their agricultural counterparts—the peasant-proprietors of Tuscany, Switzerland, Germany, and other countries where the labourers are the owners of the soil they cultivate. “In walking anywhere in the neighbourhood of Zürich,” says Inglis, in his work on Switzerland, the South of France, and the Pyrenees, “one is struck with the extraordinary industry of the inhabitants. When I used to open my casement, between four and five o’clock in the morning, to look out upon the lake and the distant Alps, I saw the labourer in the fields; and when I returned from an evening walk, long after sunset, as late perhaps as half-past eight, there was the labourer mowing his grass or tying up his vines.” The same state of thing exists among the French peasantry under the same circumstances. “The industry of the small proprietor,” says Arthur Young, in his “Travels in France,” “were so conspicuous and so meritorious, that no commendation would be too great for it. It was sufficient to prove that property in land is, of all others, the most active instigator to severe and incessant labour.” If, then, this principle of working for one’s self has been found to increase the industry, and consequently the productiveness of labourers, to such an extent in agriculture, it is but natural that it should be attended with the same results in manufactures, and that we should find the small masters and the peasant-proprietors toiling longer and working quicker than labourers serving others rather than themselves. But there is an important distinction to be drawn between the produce of the peasant-proprietor and that of the small master. Toil as diligently as the little farmer may, since he cultivates the soil not for profit, but as a means of subsistence, and his produce contributes directly to his support, it follows that his comforts must be increased by his extra-production; or, in other words, that the more he labours, the more food he obtains. The small master, however, producing what he cannot eat, must carry his goods to market and exchange them for articles of consumption. Hence, by over-toil he lowers the market against himself; that is to say, the more he labours the less food he ultimately obtains.

But not only is it true that over-work makes under-pay, but the converse of the proposition is equally true, that under-pay makes over-work; that is to say, it is true of those trades where the system of piece-work or small mastership admits of the operative doing the utmost amount of work that he is able to accomplish, for the workman in such cases seldom or never thinks of reducing his expenditure to his income, but rather of increasing his labour, so as still to bring his income, by extra production, up to his expenditure. This brings us to another important distinction which it is necessary to make between the peasant-proprietor and the small master. The little farmer cannot increase his produce by devoting a less amount of labour to each of the articles; that is to say, he cannot scamp his work without diminishing his future stock. A given quantity of labour must be used to obtain a given amount of produce. None of the details can be omitted without a diminution of the result: scamp the ploughing and there will be a smaller crop. In manufactures, however, the result is very different. There one of the principal means of increasing the productions of a particular trade, and of the cabinet trade especially, is by decreasing the amount of work in each article. Hence, in such cases, all kinds of schemes and impositions are resorted to to make the unskilled labour equal to the skilled, and thus the market is glutted with slop productions till the honourable part of the trade, both workmen and employers, are ultimately obliged to resort to the same tricks as the rest.

There were, about twenty years ago, a numerous body of tradesmen, who were employers, though not workmen to the general public, known as “trade-working masters.” These men, of whom there are still a few, confined their business solely to supplying the trade. They supplied the greater establishments where there were showrooms with a cheaper article than the proprietors of those greater establishments might be able to have had manufactured on their own premises. They worked not on speculation, but to order, and were themselves employers. Some employed, at a busy time, from twenty to forty hands, all working on their premises, which were merely adapted for making, and not for selling or showing furniture. There are still such trade-working masters, the extent of their business not being a quarter what it was; neither do they now generally adhere to the practice of having men to work on their premises, but they give out the material, which their journeymen make up at their own abodes.

“About twenty years ago,” said an experienced man to me, “I dare say the small masters formed about a quarter of the trade. The slacker trade becomes, the more the small masters increase; that’s because they can’t get other work to do; and so, rather than starve, they begin to get a little stuff of their own, and make up things for themselves, and sell them as best they can. The great increase of the small masters was when trade became so dead. When was it that we used to have to go about so with our things? About five years since, wasn’t it?” said he, appealing to one of his sons, who was at work in the same room with him. “Yes, father,” replied the lad, “just after the railway bubble; nobody wanted anything at all then.” The old man continued to say,—“The greater part of the men that couldn’t get employed at the regular shops then turned to making up things on their account; and now, I should say, there’s at least one half working for themselves. About twelve years ago masters wanted to cut the men down, and many of the hands, rather than put up with it, took to making up for themselves. Whenever there’s a decrease of wages there’s always an increase of small masters; for it’s not until men can’t live comfortably by their labour that they take to making things on their own account.”

I now come to the amount of capital required for an operative cabinet-maker to begin business on his own account.

To show the readiness with which any youth out of his time, as it is called, can start in trade as a garret cabinet master, I have learned the following particulars:—This lad, when not living with his friends, usually occupies a garret, and in this he constructs a rude bench out of old materials, which may cost him 2s. If he be penniless when he ceases to be an apprentice, and can get no work as a journeyman, which is nearly always the case, for reasons I have before stated, he assists another garret-master to make a bedstead, perhaps; and the established garret-master carries two bedsteads instead of one to the slaughter-house. The lad’s share of the proceeds may be about 5s.; and out of that, if his needs will permit him, he buys the article, and so proceeds by degrees. Many men, to start themselves, as it is called, have endured, I am informed, something like starvation most patiently. The tools are generally collected by degrees, and often in the last year of apprenticeship, out of the boy’s earnings. They are seldom bought first-hand, but at the marine-store shops, or at the second-hand furniture brokers’ in the New Cut. The purchaser grinds and sharpens them up at any friendly workman’s where he can meet with the loan of a grindstone, and puts new handles to them himself out of pieces of waste wood. 10s. or even 5s. thus invested has started a man with tools, while 20s. has accomplished it in what might be considered good style. In some cases the friends of the boy, if they are not poverty-stricken, advance him from 40s. to 50s. to begin with, and he must then shift for himself.

When a bench and tools have been obtained, the young master buys such material as his means afford, and sets himself to work. If he has a few shillings to spare he makes himself a sort of bedstead, and buys a rug or a sheet and a little bedding. If he has not the means to do so he sleeps on shavings stuffed into an old sack. In some few cases he hires a bench alongside some other garret-master, but the arrangement of two or three men occupying one room for their labour is more frequent when the garrets where the men sleep are required for their wives’ labour in any distinct business, or when the articles the men make are too cumbrous, like wardrobes, to be carried easily down the narrow stairs.

A timber merchant, part of whose business consists in selling material to little masters, gave me two instances, within his own knowledge, of journeymen beginning to manufacture on their own account.

A fancy cabinet-maker had 3s. 6d. at his command. With this he purchased material for a desk as follows:—

The making of the desk occupied four hours, as he bestowed extra pains upon it, and he sold it to a slaughterer for 3s. 6d. He then broke his fast on bread and water, bought material for a second desk and went to work again, and so he proceeds now; toiling and half-starving, and struggling to get 20s. a-head of the world to buy more wood at one time, and not pause so often in his work. “Perhaps,” said my informant, “he’ll marry, as most of the small masters do, some foolish servant-of-all-work, who has saved 3l. or 4l., and that will be his capital.”

Another general cabinet-maker commenced business on 30s., a part of which he expended in the material for a 4-foot chest of drawers.

For the article when completed he received 25s., toiling at it for 27 or 28 hours. The tradesman from whom I derived this information, and who was familiar with every branch of the trade, calculated that three-fifths of the working cabinet-makers of London make for the warehouses—in other words, that there are 3000 small masters in the trade. The most moderate computation was that the number so employed exceed one half of the entire body of the 5000 metropolitan journeymen.

The next point in this inquiry is concerning the industry and productiveness of this class of workmen. Of over-work, as regards excessive labour, and of over-production from scamped workmanship, I heard the following accounts which different operatives, both in the fancy and general cabinet trade concurred in giving, while some represented the labour as of longer duration by at least an hour, and some by two hours a day, than I have stated.

The labour of the men who depend entirely on the slaughter-houses for the purchase of their articles, with all the disadvantages that I described in a former letter, is usually seven days a week the year through. That is seven days—for Sunday-work is all but universal—each of 13 hours, or 91 hours in all, while the established hours of labour in the honourable trade are six days of the week, each of 10 hours, or 60 hours in all. Thus 50 per cent is added to the extent of the production of low-priced cabinet work merely from over-hours, but in some cases I heard of 15 hours for seven days in the week, or 105 hours in all. The exceptions to this continuous toil are from one to three hours once or twice in the week, when the workman is engaged in purchasing his material of a timber merchant, who sells it in small quantities, and from six to eight hours when he is employed in conveying his goods to a warehouse, or from warehouse to warehouse for sale. Concerning the hours of labour I had the following minute particulars from a garret-master who was a chairmaker.

“I work from 6 every morning to 9 at night—some work till 10—I breakfast at 8, which stops me for 10 minutes. I can breakfast in less time, but it’s a rest; my dinner takes me say 20 minutes at the outside, and my tea 8 minutes. All the rest of the time I’m slaving at my bench. How many minutes’ rest is that, sir? 38. Well, say three-quarters of an hour, and that allows a few sucks at a pipe when I rest; but I can smoke and work too. I have only one room to work and eat in, or I should lose more time. Altogether I labour 14¼ hours every day, and I must work on Sundays at least 40 Sundays in the year. One may as well work as sit fretting. But on Sundays I only work till it’s dusk, or till five or six in summer. When it’s dusk I take a walk; I’m not well-dressed enough for a Sunday walk when its light, and I can’t wear my apron very well on that day to hide patches. But there’s eight hours that I reckon I take up every week in dancing about to the slaughterers’. I’m satisfied that I work very nearly 100 hours a-week the year through, deducting the time taken up by the slaughterers and buying stuff—say eight hours a-week, it gives more than 90 hours a-week for my work, and there’s hundreds labour as hard as I do just for a crust.”

This excessive toil, however, is but one element of over-production. Scamping adds at least 200 per cent to the productions of the cabinet-maker’s trade. I have ascertained several cases of this over-work from scamping, and adduce two. A very quick hand, a little master, working as he called it “at a slaughtering pace” for a warehouse, made 60 plain writing desks in a week of 90 hours, whilst a first-rate workman, also a quick hand, made 18 in a week of 70 hours. The scamping hand said he must work at the rate he did to make 14s. a-week from a slaughter-house, and so used to such style of work had he become, that though a few years back he did west-end work in the best style, he could not now make 18 desks in a week, if compelled to finish them in the style of excellence displayed in the work of the journeyman employed for the honourable trade. Perhaps, he added, he couldn’t make them in that style at all. The frequent use of rosewood veneers in the fancy cabinet, and their occasional use in the general cabinet trade, gives, I was told, great facilities for scamping. If, in his haste, the scamping hand injure the veneer, or if it has been originally faulty, he takes a mixture of gum shellac and “colour,” (colour being a composition of Venetian red and lamp black) which he has already by him, rubs it over the damaged part, smooths it with a slightly heated iron, and so blends it with the colour of the rosewood that the warehouseman does not detect the flaw. Indeed, I was told that very few warehousemen are judges of the furniture they bought, and they only require it to look well enough for sale to the public, who know even less than themselves. In the general cabinet trade I found the same ratio of scamping, compared with the products of skilled labour in the honourable trade. A good workman made a 4-foot mahogany chest of drawers in five days, working the regular hours, and receiving at piece-work price 35s. A scamping hand made five of the same size in a week, and had time to carry them for sale to the warehouses, wait for their purchase or refusal, and buy material. But for the necessity of doing this the scamping hand could have made seven in the 91 hours of his week, of course in a very inferior manner. They would hold together for a time, I was assured, and that was all; but the slaughterers cared only to have them viewy and cheap. These two cases exceed the average, and I have cited them to show what can be done under the scamping system.

I now come to show how this scamp work is executed, that is to say, by what helps or assistants when such are employed. As in all trades where lowness of wages is the rule, the apprentice system prevails among the cheap cabinet-workers. It prevails, however, among the garret-masters, by very many of them having one, two, three, or four apprentices, and so the number of boys thus employed through the whole trade is considerable. This refers principally to the general cabinet trade. In the fancy trade the number is greater, as the boys’ labour is more readily available, but in this trade the greatest number of apprentices is employed by such warehousemen as are manufacturers, as some at the east end are—or rather by the men that they constantly keep at work. Of these men one has now 8, and another 14 boys in his service, some apprenticed, some merely engaged and discharged at pleasure. A sharp boy, thus apprenticed, in six or eight months becomes handy, but four out of five of the workmen thus brought up can do nothing well but their own particular branch, and that only well as far as celerity in production is considered.

I have before alluded to the utter destitution of the cheap workers belonging to the cabinet trade, and I now subjoin the statement of a man whom I found last winter in the Asylum for the Houseless Poor.

“I have been out of work a twelvemonth, as near as I can reckon. When I was in work I was sometimes at piece-work and sometimes at day-work. When I first joined the trade (I never served my time, my brother learnt me) there was plenty of work to do. For this last twelvemonth I have not been able to get anything to do, not at my own trade. I have made up one dozen of mahogany chairs on my own account. The wood and labour of them cost me 1l. 5s., I had to pay for a man to do the carving and sweeping of them, and I had to give 1l. for the wood. I could get it much cheaper now, but then I didn’t know anything about the old broken ship-wood that is now used for furniture. The chairs I made I had to sell at a sacrifice. I was a week making them, and got only 2l. for the dozen when they were done. By right I should have had at least 50s. for them, and that would have left 25s. for my week’s work, but as it was I had only 15s. clear money, and I have worked at them much harder than is usual in the trade. There are two large houses in London that are making large fortunes in this manner. About a fortnight after I found out that I couldn’t possibly get a living at this work, and as I didn’t feel inclined to make the fortunes of the large houses by starving myself, I gave up working at chair-making on my own account. I then made a few clothes-horses. I kept at that for about six months. I hawked them in the streets, but I was half-starved by it. Some days I sold them, and some I was without taking a penny. I never in one day got rid of more than half-a-dozen, and they brought 3s., out of which there was the wood and the other materials to pay for, and they would be 1s. 6d. at least. If I could get rid of two or three in a day I thought I did pretty well, and my profit on these was about 9d., not more. At last I became so reduced by the work that I was not able to buy any more wood, and the week after that I was forced to quit my lodging. I owed three weeks’ rent, at 1s. 6d. a week, and was turned out in consequence. I had no things for them to seize, they had all gone long before. Then I was thrown upon the streets. I had no friends (my brothers are both out of the country) and no home. I was sleeping about anywhere I could. I used to go and sit at the coffee-houses where I knew my mates were in the habit of going, and they would give me a bit of something to eat, and make a collection to pay for a bed for me. At last this even began to fail me, my mates could do no more for me. Then I applied to some of the unions, but they refused to admit me into the casual ward on account of my not being a traveller. I was a whole week walking in the streets without ever lying to rest. I used to go to Billingsgate to get a nap for a few minutes, and then I used to have a doze now and then on a door-step and under the railway arches. At this time I had scarcely any food at all, not even bread. At last I was fairly worn out, and being in the neighbourhood, I applied at St. Luke’s, and told them I was starving. They said they could do nothing for me, and advised me to apply at the Houseless Poor Asylum. I did so, and was admitted directly. I have been four nights in the Asylum already, and I don’t know what I shall do when I leave. My tools are all gone; they are sold, and I have no money to buy new ones. There are hundreds in the trade like me, walking about the streets with nothing to do and no place to put their heads in.”

I shall now conclude with the following statement as to the effects produced by the slop cabinet business upon the honourable part of the trade. I derived my information from Mr. ——, one of the principal masters at the west-end, and who has the highest character for consideration for his men. “Since the establishment of slaughter houses, and aptly indeed,” said my informant, “from my knowledge of their effects upon the workmen, have they been named—the demand for articles of the best cabinet-work, in the manufacture of which the costliest woods and the most skilled labour London can supply are required, has diminished upwards of 25 per cent. The demand, moreover, continues still to diminish gradually. The result is obvious. Only three men are now employed in this trade in lieu of four as formerly, and the men displaced may swell the lists of the underpaid, and even of the slop-workers. The expense incurred by some of the leading masters in the honourable trade is considerable, and for objects the designs of which inferior masters pirate from us. The designs for new styles of furniture add from 5 to 10 per cent to the cost of the most elaborate articles that we manufacture. The first time any of these novel designs comes to the hammer by the sale of a gentleman’s effects they are certain of piracy, and so the pattern descends to the slaughter-houses. These great houses are frequently offered prices, and by very wealthy persons, that are an insult to a tradesman wishing to pay a fair price to his workmen. For instance, for an 8-foot mahogany bookcase, after a new design, and made to the very best style of art, the material being the choicest, and everything about in admirable keeping, the price is 50 guineas. ‘O dear!’ some rich customer will say, ‘50 guineas! I’ll give you 20, or, indeed, I’ll give you 25.’” (I afterwards heard from a journeyman that this would be the cost of the labour alone.) The gentleman I saw spoke highly of the intelligence and good conduct of the men employed, only society men being at work on his premises. He feared that the slop-trade, if not checked, would more and more swamp the honourable trade.

A curious part of the street toy business is the sale of dolls, and especially that odd branch of it, doll’s-eye making. There are only two persons following this business in London, and by the most intelligent of these I was furnished with the following curious information:—

“I make all kinds of eyes,” the eye-manufacturer said, “both dolls’ and human eyes; birds’ eyes are mostly manufactured in Birmingham, and as you say, sir, bulls’ eyes at the confectioner’s. Of dolls’ eyes there are two sorts, the common and the natural, as we call it. The common are simply small hollow glass spheres, made of white enamel, and coloured either black or blue, for only two colours of these are made. The bettermost dolls’ eyes, or the natural ones, are made in a superior manner, but after a similar fashion to the commoner sort. The price of the common black and blue dolls’ eyes is five shillings for twelve dozen pair. We make very few of the bettermost kind, or natural eyes for dolls, for the price of those is about fourpence a pair, but they are only for the very best dolls. Average it throughout the year, a journeyman doll’s-eye maker earns about thirty shillings a-week. The common dolls’ eyes were twelve shillings the twelve dozen pairs twenty-five years ago, but now they are only five shillings. The decrease of the price is owing to competition, for though there are only two of us in the trade in London, still the other party is always pushing his eyes and underselling our’n. Immediately the demand ceases at all, he goes round the trade with his eyes in a box, and offers them at a lower figure than in the regular season, and so the prices have been falling every year. There is a brisk and a slack season in our business, as well as in most others. After the Christmas holidays up to March we have generally little to do, but from that time eyes begin to look up a bit, and the business remains pretty good till the end of October. Where we make one pair of eyes for home consumption, we make ten for exportation; a great many eyes go abroad. Yes, I suppose we should be soon over-populated with dolls if a great number of them were not to emigrate every year. The annual increase of dolls goes on at an alarming rate. As you say, sir, the yearly rate of mortality must be very high, to be sure, but still it’s nothing to the rate at which they are brought into the world. They can’t make wax dolls in America, sir, so we ship off a great many there. The reason why they can’t produce dolls in America is owing to the climate. The wax won’t set in very hot weather, and it cracks in extreme cold. I knew a party who went out to the United States to start as doll-maker. He took several gross of my eyes with him, but he couldn’t succeed. The eyes that we make for Spanish America are all black. A blue-eyed doll wouldn’t sell at all there. Here, however, nothing but blue eyes goes down; that’s because it’s the colour of the Queen’s eyes, and she sets the fashion in our eyes as in other things. We make the same kind of eyes for the gutta-percha dolls as for the wax. It is true, the gutta-percha complexion isn’t particularly clear; nevertheless, the eyes I make for the washable faces are all of the natural tint, and if the gutta-percha dolls look rather bilious, why I ain’t a going to make my eyes look bilious to match.

“I also make human eyes. These are two cases; in the one I have black and hazel, and in the other blue and grey.” [Here the man took the lids off a couple of boxes, about as big as binnacles, that stood on the table: they each contained 190 different eyes, and so like nature, that the effect produced upon a person unaccustomed to the sight was most peculiar, and far from pleasant. The whole of the 380 optics all seemed to be staring directly at the spectator, and occasioned a feeling somewhat similar to the bewilderment one experiences on suddenly becoming an object of general notice; as if the eyes, indeed, of a whole lecture-room were crammed into a few square inches, and all turned full upon you. The eyes of the whole world, as we say, literally appeared to be fixed upon one, and it was almost impossible at first to look at them without instinctively averting the head. The hundred eyes of Argus were positively insignificant in comparison to the 380 belonging to the human eye-maker.] “Here you see are the ladies’ eyes,” he continued, taking one from the blue-eye tray. “You see there’s more sparkle and brilliance about them than the gentlemen’s. Here’s two different ladies’ eyes; they belong to fine-looking young women, both of them. When a lady or gentleman comes to us for an eye, we are obliged to have a sitting just like a portrait-painter. We take no sketch, but study the tints of the perfect eye. There are a number of eyes come over from France, but these are generally what we call misfits; they are sold cheap, and seldom match the other eye. Again, from not fitting tight over the ball like those that are made expressly for the person, they seldom move ‘consentaneously,’ as it is termed, with the natural eye, and have therefore a very unpleasant and fixed stare, worse almost than the defective eye itself. Now, the eyes we make move so freely, and have such a natural appearance, that I can assure you a gentleman who had one of his from me passed nine doctors without the deception being detected.

“There is a lady customer of mine who has been married three years to her husband, and I believe he doesn’t know that she has a false eye to this day.

“The generality of persons whom we serve take out their eyes when they go to bed, and sleep with them either under their pillow, or else in a tumbler of water on the toilet-table at their side. Most married ladies, however, never take their eyes out at all.

“Some people wear out a false eye in half the time of others. This doesn’t arise from the greater use of them, or rolling them about, but from the increased secretion of the tears, which act on the false eye like acid on metal, and so corrodes and roughens the surface. This roughness produces inflammation, and then a new eye becomes necessary. The Scotch lose a great many eyes, why I cannot say; and the men in this country lose more eyes, nearly two to one. We generally make only one eye, but I did once make two false eyes for a widow lady. She lost one first, and we repaired the loss so well, that on her losing the other eye she got us to make her a second.

“False eyes are a great charity to servants. If they lose an eye no one will engage them. In Paris there is a charitable institution for the supply of false eyes to the poor; and I really think, if there was a similar establishment in this country for furnishing artificial eyes to those whose bread depends on their looks, like servants, it would do a great deal of good. We always supplies eyes to such people at half-price. My usual price is 2l. 2s. for one of my best eyes. That eye is a couple of guineas, and as fine an eye as you would wish to see in any young woman’s head.

“I suppose we make from 300 to 400 false eyes every year. The great art in making a false eye is in polishing the edges quite smooth. Of dolls’ eyes we make about 6000 dozen pairs of the common ones every year. I take it that there are near upon 24,000 dozen, or more than a quarter of a million, pairs of all sorts of dolls’ eyes made annually in London.”

THE COAL-HEAVERS. — The Coalbackers. — Comparative Table of Drunkenness of the different Trades in London. — The Coalmeters. — The Coalporters.

The transition from the artisan to the labourer is curious in many respects. In passing from the skilled operative of the west-end to the unskilled workman of the eastern quarter of London, the moral and intellectual change is so great, that it seems as if we were in a new land, and among another race. The artisans are almost to a man red-hot politicians. They are sufficiently educated and thoughtful to have a sense of their importance in the State. It is true they may entertain exaggerated notions of their natural rank and position in the social scale, but at least they have read, and reflected, and argued upon the subject, and their opinions are entitled to consideration. The political character and sentiments of the working classes appear to me to be a distinctive feature of the age, and they are a necessary consequence of the dawning intelligence of the mass. As their minds expand, they are naturally led to take a more enlarged view of their calling, and to contemplate their labours in relation to the whole framework of society. They begin to view their class, not as a mere isolated body of workmen, but as an integral portion of the nation, contributing their quota to the general welfare. If property has its duties as well as its rights; labour, on the other hand, they say, has its rights as well as its duties. The artisans of London seem to be generally well-informed upon these subjects. That they express their opinions violently, and often savagely, it is my duty to acknowledge; but that they are the unenlightened and unthinking body of people that they are generally considered by those who never go among them, and who see them only as “the dangerous classes,” it is my duty also to deny. So far as my experience has gone, I am bound to confess, that I have found the skilled labourers of the metropolis the very reverse, both morally and intellectually, of what the popular prejudice imagines them.

The unskilled labourers are a different class of people. As yet they are as unpolitical as footmen, and instead of entertaining violent democratic opinions, they appear to have no political opinions whatever; or, if they do possess any, they rather lead towards the maintenance of “things as they are,” than towards the ascendancy of the working people. I have lately been investigating the state of the coalwhippers, and these reflections are forced upon me by the marked difference in the character and sentiments of these people from those of the operative tailors. Among the latter class there appeared to be a general bias towards the six points of the Charter; but the former were extremely proud of their having turned out to a man on the 10th of April, 1848, and become special constables for the maintenance of law and order on the day of the great Chartist demonstration. As to which of these classes are the better members of the state, it is not for me to offer an opinion; I merely assert a social fact. The artisans of the metropolis are intelligent, and dissatisfied with their political position: the labourers of London appear to be the reverse; and in passing from one class to the other, the change is so curious and striking, that the phenomenon deserves at least to be recorded in this place.

The labourers, in point of numbers, rank second on the occupation-list of the metropolis. The domestic servants, as a body of people, have the first numerical position, being as many 168,000, while the labourers are less than one-third that number, or 50,000 strong. They, however, are nearly twice as many as the boot and shoemakers, who stand next upon the list, and muster 28,000 individuals among them; and they are more than twice as many as the tailors and breeches-makers, who are fourth in regard to their number, and count 23,500 persons. After these come the milliners and dressmakers, who are 20,000 in number.

According to the Criminal Returns of the metropolis (for a copy of which I am indebted to the courtesy of a gentleman who expresses himself most anxious to do all in his power to aid the inquiry), the labourers occupy a most unenviable pre-eminence in police history. One in every twenty-eight labourers, according to these returns, has a predisposition for simple larceny: the average for the whole population of London is one in every 266 individuals; so that the labourers may be said to be more than nine times as dishonest as the generality of people resident in the metropolis. In drunkenness they occupy the same prominent position. One in every twenty-two individuals of the labouring class was charged with being intoxicated in the year 1848; whereas the average number of drunkards in the whole population of London is one in every 113 individuals. Nor are they less pugnaciously inclined; one in every twenty-six having been charged with a common assault, of a more or less aggravated form. The labourers of London are, therefore, nine times as dishonest, five times as drunken, and nine times as savage as the rest of the community. Of the state of their education as a body of people I have no similar means of judging at present; nor am I in a position to test their improvidence or their poverty in the same conclusive manner. Taking, however, the Government returns of the number of labourers located in the different unions throughout the country at the time of taking the last census, I find that one in every 140 of the class were paupers; while the average for all England and Wales was one in every 159 persons: so that, while the Government returns show the labourers generally to be extraordinarily dishonest, drunken, and pugnacious, their vices cannot be ascribed to the poverty of their calling; for, compared with other occupations, their avocation appears to produce fewer paupers than the generality of employments.

Of the moral and prudential qualities of the coalwhippers and coalporters, as a special portion of the labouring population, the crude, undigested, and essentially unscientific character of all the Government returns will not allow me to judge. Even the Census affords us little or no opportunity of estimating the numbers of the class. The only information to be obtained from that document—whose insufficiency is a national disgrace to us, for there the trading and working classes are all jumbled together in the most perplexing confusion, and the occupations classified in a manner that would shame the merest tyro in logic—is the following:—

Of coal and colliery agents and factors there are in London	16
Ditto dealers and merchants	1541
Ditto labourers, heavers, and porters	1700
Ditto meters	136
Total in the coal trade in London	3393
Deduct from this the number of merchants from the London Post Office Directory	565
Hence the coal labourers in the metropolis amount to	2828

But this is far from being an accurate result. There are at present in London upwards of 1900 (say 2000) registered coalwhippers, and as many more coalbackers or porters. These altogether would give as many as 4000 coal-labourers. Besides, there are 150 meters; so that, altogether, it may be safely said that the number engaged in the whipping and porterage of coals in London is 4000 and odd.

The following statistics, carefully collected from official returns, will furnish our readers with some idea of the amazing increase in the importation of coal:—

“About 300 years ago (say about 1550) one or two ships were sufficient for the demand and supply of London. In 1615, about 200 were equal to its demand; in 1705, about 600 ships were engaged in the London coal-trade; in 1805, 4856 cargoes, containing about 1,350,000 tons; in 1820, 5884 cargoes, containing 1,692,992 tons; in 1830, 7108 cargoes, containing 2,079,275 tons; in 1840, 9132 cargoes, containing 2,566,899 tons; in 1845, 2695 ships were employed in carrying 11,987 cargoes, containing 3,403,320 tons; and during the year 1848, 2717 ships, making 12,267 voyages, and containing 3,418,340 tons. The increase in the importation from the year 1838 to 1848, when the respective importations were 2,518,085 tons and 3,418,340 tons, is upwards of 90 per cent. Now, by taking 2700 vessels as the actual number now employed, and by calculating such vessels to average 300 tons burden per ship, and giving to a vessel of that size a crew of eight men, it will appear that at the present time 21,600 seamen are employed in the carrying department of the London coal-trade.”

Before visiting the district of Wapping, where the greater part of the coal labour is carried on, I applied to the Clerk and Registrar of the Coal Exchange for the statistics connected with the body of which he is an officer. Such statistics—as to the extent of their great traffic, the weekly returns of sales, in short, the ramifications of an inquiry embracing maritime, mercantile, mining, and labouring interests, are surely the weekly routine of the business of the Registrar’s office. I was promised a series of returns by the gentleman in question, but I did not receive and could not obtain them. Another officer, the Secretary of the Meters’ Office, when applied to, with the sanction of his co-officer, the Clerk and Registrar, required a written application which should be attended to! I do not allude to these gentlemen with the slightest inclination unduly to censure them. The truth is, with questions affecting labour and the poor they have little sympathy. The labourer, in their eyes, is but a machine; so many labourers are as so many horse-power. To deny, or withhold, or delay information required for the purposes of the present inquiry is, however, unavailing. The matter I have given in fulness and in precision, without any aid from the gentlemen referred to shows that it was more through courtesy than through necessity that I applied to them in the first instance.

Finding my time, therefore, only wasted in dancing attendance upon city coal officials, I made the best of my way down to the Coalwhippers’ Office, to glean my information among the men themselves. The following is the result of my inquiries:—

The coal-vessels are principally moored in that part of the river called the Pool.

The Pool, rightly so called, extends from Ratcliffe-cross, near the Regent’s-canal, to Execution-dock, and is about a mile long, but the jurisdiction of the Coal Commissioners reaches from the Arsenal at Woolwich to London-bridge. The Pool is divided into the Upper and Lower Pool; it is more commonly called the North and South side, because the colliers are arranged on the Ratcliffe and Shadwell side, in the Lower Pool, and on the Redriff and Rotherhithe side, in the Upper. The Lower Pool consists of seven tiers, which generally contain each from fourteen to twenty ships; these are moored stern to stern, and lie from seven to ten abreast. The Upper Pool contains about ten tiers. The four tiers at Mill-hole are equally large with the tiers of the Lower Pool. Those of Church-hole, which are three in number, are somewhat smaller; and those of the fast tiers, which are also three in number, are single, and not double tiers like the rest. The fleet often consists of from 200 to 300 ships. In the winter it is the largest, many of the colliers in the summer season going foreign voyages. An easterly wind prevents the vessels making their way to London; and, if continuing for any length of time, will throw the whole of the coalwhippers out of work. In the winter, the coalwhipper is occupied about five days out of eight, and about three days out of eight in the summer; so that, taking it all the year round, he is only about half of his time employed. As soon as a collier arrives at Gravesend, the captain sends the ship’s papers up to the factor at the Coal Exchange, informing him of the quality and quantity of coal in the ship. The captain then falls into some tier near Gravesend, and remains there until he is ordered nearer London by the harbour-master. When the coal is sold and the ship supplied with the coal-meter, the captain receives orders from the harbour-master to come up into the Pool, and take his berth in a particular tier. The captain, when he has moored his ship into the Pool as directed, applies at the Coalwhippers’ Office, and “the gang” next in rotation is sent to him.

There are upwards of 200 gangs of coalwhippers. The class, supernumeraries included, numbers about 2000 individuals. The number of meters is 150; the consequence is, that more than one-fourth of the gangs are unprovided with meters to work with them. Hence there are upwards of fifty gangs (of nine men each) of coalwhippers, or altogether 450 men more than there is any real occasion for. The consequence is, that each coalwhipper is necessarily thrown out of employ one-quarter of his time by the excess of hands. The cause of this extra number of hands being kept on the books is, that when there is a glut of vessels in the river, the coal-merchants may not be delayed in having their cargoes delivered from want of whippers. When such a glut occurs, the merchant has it in his power to employ a private meter; so that the 450 to 500 men are kept on the year through, merely to meet the particular exigency, and to promote the merchant’s convenience. Did any good arise from this system to the public, the evil might be overlooked; but since, owing to the combination of the coalfactors, no more coals can come into the market than are sufficient to meet the demand without lowering the price, it is clear that the extra 450 or 500 men are kept on and allowed to deprive their fellow-labourers of one-quarter of their regular work as whippers, without any advantage to the public.

The coalwhippers, previous to the passing of the Act of Parliament in 1843, were employed and paid by the publicans in the neighbourhood of the river, from Tower-hill to Limehouse. Under this system, none but the most dissolute and intemperate obtained employment; in fact, the more intemperate they were the more readily they found work. The publicans were the relatives of the northern shipowners; they mostly had come to London penniless, and being placed in a tavern by their relatives, soon became shipowners themselves. There were at that time seventy taverns on the north side of the Thames, below bridge, employing coalwhippers, and all of the landlords making fortunes out of the earnings of the people. When a ship came to be “made up,” that is, for the hands to be hired, the men assembled round the bar in crowds and began calling for drink, and out-bidding each other in the extent of their orders, so as to induce the landlord to give them employment. If one called for beer, the next would be sure to give an order for rum; for he who spent most at the public-house had the greatest chance of employment. After being “taken on,” their first care was to put up a score at the public-house, so as to please their employer, the publican. In the morning before going to their work, they would invariably call at the house for a quartern of gin or rum; and they were obliged to take off with them to the ship “a bottle,” holding nine pots of beer, and that of the worst description, for it was the invariable practice among the publicans to supply the coalwhippers with the very worst articles at the highest prices. When the men returned from their work they went back to the public-house, and there remained drinking the greater part of the night. He must have been a very steady man indeed, I am told, who could manage to return home sober to his wife and family. The consequence of this was, the men used to pass their days, and chief part of their nights, drinking in the public-house; and I am credibly informed that frequently, on the publican settling with them after leaving the ship, instead of having anything to receive they were brought in several shillings in debt; this remained as a score for the next ship: in fact, it was only those who were in debt to the publican who were sure of employment on the next occasion. One publican had as many as fifteen ships; another had even more; and there was scarcely one of them without his two or three colliers. The children of the coalwhippers were almost reared in the tap-room, and a person who has had great experience in the trade, tells me he knew as many as 500 youths who were transported, and as many more who met with an untimely death. At one house there were forty young robust men employed, about seventeen years ago, and of these there are only two living at present. My informant tells me that he has frequently seen as many as 100 men at one time fighting pell-mell at King James’s-stairs, and the publican standing by to see fair play. The average money spent in drink by each man was about 12s. to each ship. There were about 10,000 ships entered the Pool each year, and nine men were required to clear each ship. This made the annual expenditure of the coalwhippers in drink, 54,000l., or 27l. a-year per man. This is considered an extremely low average. The wives and families of the men at this time were in the greatest destitution, the daughters invariably became prostitutes, and the mothers ultimately went to swell the number of paupers at the union. This state of things continued till 1843, when, by the efforts of three of the coalwhippers, the Legislature was induced to pass an Act forbidding the system, and appointing Commissioners for the registration and regulation of coalwhippers in the port of London, and so establishing an office where the men were in future employed and paid. Under this Act, every man then following the calling of a coalwhipper was to be registered. For this registration 4d. was to be paid; and every man desirous of entering upon the same business had to pay the same sum, and to have his name registered. The employment is open to any labouring man; but every new hand, after registering himself, must work for twenty-one days on half-pay before he is considered to be “broken in,” and entitled to take rank and receive pay as a regular coalwhipper.

All the coalwhippers are arranged in gangs of eight whippers, with a basket-man or foreman. These gangs are numbered from 1 up to 218, which is the highest number at the present time. The basket-men, or foremen, enter their names in a rotation-book kept in the office, and as their names stand in that book so do they take their turn to clear the ship that is offered. On a ship being offered, a printed form of application, kept in the office, is filled up by the captain, in which he states the number of tons, the price, and time in which she is to be delivered. If the gang whose turn of work it is refuse the ship at the price offered, then it is offered to all the gangs, and if accepted by any other gang, the next in rotation may claim it as their right, before all others. In connexion with the office there is a long hall, extending from the street to the water-side, where the men wait to take their turn. There is also a room called the basket-men’s room, where the foremen of the gang remain in attendance. There is likewise a floating pier called a dépôt, which is used as a receptacle for the tackle with which the colliers are unloaded. This floating pier is fitted up with seats, where the men wait in the summer. The usual price at present for delivering the colliers is 8d. per ton; but in case of a less price being offered, and the gangs all refusing it, then the captain is at liberty to employ any hands he pleases. According to the Act, however, the owner or purchaser of the coals is at liberty to employ his own servants, provided they have been in his service fourteen clear days previous, and so have become what the Act terms bonâ fide servants. This is very often taken advantage of, for the purpose of obtaining labourers at a less price. One lighterman, who is employed by the gas companies to “lighter” their coals to their various destinations, makes a practice of employing parties whom he calls the bonâ fide servants of the gas companies, to deliver the coals at a penny per ton less than the regular price. Besides this, he takes one man’s pay to himself, and so stops one-tenth of the whole proceeds, thereby realizing, as he boasts, the sum of 300l. per annum. Added to this, a relative of his keeps a beer-shop, where the “bonâ fide servants” spend the chief part of their earnings, thereby bringing back the old system, which was the cause of so much misery and destitution to the work-people.

According to the custom of the trade, the rate at which a ship is to be delivered is forty-nine tons per day, and if the ship cannot be delivered at that rate, owing to the merchant failing to send craft to receive the coals, then the coalwhippers are entitled to receive pay at the rate of forty-nine tons per day, for each day they are kept in the ship over and above the time allowed by the custom of the trade for the delivery of the coals. The merchants, however, if they should have failed to send craft, and so keep the men idle on the first days of the contract, can, by the by-laws of the Commissioners, compel the coalwhippers to deliver the ship at the rate of ninety-eight tons per day: the merchants surely should be made to pay for the loss of time to the men at the same rate. The wrong done by this practice is rendered more apparent by the conduct of the merchants during the brisk and slack periods. When there is a slack, the merchants are all anxious to get their vessels delivered as fast as they can, because coals are wanting, and are consequently at a high price; then the men are taxed beyond their power, and are frequently made to deliver 150 to 200 tons per day, or to do four days’ work in one. On the contrary, when there is a glut of ships, and the merchants are not particularly anxious about the delivery of the coals, the men are left to idle away their time upon the decks for the first two or three days of the contract, and then forced to the same extra exertion for the last two or three days, in order to make up for the lost time of the merchant, and so save him from being put to extra expense by his own neglect. The cause of the injustice of these by-laws may be fairly traced to the fact of there being several coal-merchants among the Commissioners, who are entrusted with the formation of bye-laws and regulations of the trade. The coalfactors are generally ship-owners, and occasionally pit-owners; and when a glut of ships come in they combine together to keep up the prices, especially in the winter time, for they keep back the cargoes, and only offer such a number of ships as will not influence the market. Since the passing of the Act, establishing the Coalwhippers’ Office, and thus taking the employment and pay of the men out of the hands of the publicans, so visible has been the improvement in the whole character of the labourers, that they have raised themselves in the respect of all who know them.

Within the last few years they have established a Benefit Society, and they expended in the year 1847, according to the last account, 646l. odd, in the relief of the sick and the burial of the dead. They have also established a superannuation fund, out of which they allow 5s. per week to each member who is incapacitated from old age or accident. They are, at the present time, paying such pensions to twenty members. At the time of the celebrated Chartist demonstration, on the 10th of April, the coalwhippers were, I believe, the first class of persons who spontaneously offered their services as special constables.

Further than this they have established a school, with accommodation for six hundred scholars, out of their small earnings. On one occasion as much as 80l. was collected among the men for the erection of this institution.

The men are liable to many accidents; some fall off the plank into the hold of the vessel, and are killed; others are injured by large lumps of coal falling on them; and, indeed, so frequent are these disasters, that the Commissioners have directed that the indivisible fraction which remains, after dividing the earnings of the men into nine equal parts, should be applied to the relief of the injured; and although the fund raised by these insignificant means amounts in the course of the year to 30l. or 40l., the whole is absorbed by the calamities.

Furnished with this information as to the general character and regulations of the calling, I then proceeded to visit one of the vessels in the river, so that I might see the nature of the labour performed. No one on board the vessel (the ——, of Newcastle) was previously aware of my visit or its object. I need not describe the vessel, as my business is with the London labourers in the coal trade. It is necessary, however, in order to show the nature of the labour of coal-whipping, that I should state that the average depth of coal in the hold of a collier, from ceiling to combing, is sixteen feet, while there is an additional seven feet to be reckoned for the basketman’s “boom,” which makes the height that the coals have to be raised by the whippers from twenty-three to thirty feet. The complement of a gang of coalwhippers is about nine. In the hold are four men, who relieve each other in filling a basket—only one basket being in use with coal. The labour of these four men is arduous: so exhausting is it in hot weather that their usual attire is found to be cumbrous, and they have often to work merely in their trousers or drawers. As fast as these four men in the hold fill the basket, which holds 1¼ cwt., four whippers draw it up. This is effected in a peculiar and, to a person unused to the contemplation of the process, really an impressive manner. The four whippers stand on the deck, at the foot of what is called “a way.” This way resembles a short rude ladder: it is formed of four broken oars lashed lengthways, from four to five feet in height (giving a step from oar to oar of more than a foot), while the upright spars to which they are attached are called “a derrick.” At the top of this “derrick” is a “gin,” which is a revolving wheel, to which the ropes holding the basket, “filled” and “whipped,” are attached. The process is thus one of manual labour with mechanical aid. The basket having been filled in the hold, the whippers correctly guessing the time for the filling—for they never look down into the hold—skip up the “way,” holding the ropes attached to the basket and the gin, and pulling the ropes at two skips, simultaneously, as they ascend. They thus hoist the loaded basket some height out of the hold, and, when hoisted so far, jump down, keeping exact time in their jump, from the topmost beam of the way on to the deck, so giving the momentum of their bodily weight to the motion communicated to the basket. While the basket is influenced by this motion and momentum, the basketman, who is stationed on a plank flung across the hold, seizes the basket, runs on with it (the gin revolving) to “the boom,” and shoots the contents into the weighing-machine. The boom is formed of two upright poles, with a cross-pole attached by way of step, on to which the basket-man vaults, and rapidly reversing the basket, empties it. This process is very quickly effected, for if the basket-man did not avail himself of the swing of the basket, the feat would be almost beyond a man’s strength, or, at least, he would soon be exhausted by it.

The machine is a large coal-scuttle or wooden box, attached to a scale connected with 2½ cwt. When the weight is raised by two deposits in the machine, which hangs over the side of the ship, it discharges it, by pulling a rope connected with it down a sliding wooden plane into the barge below. The machine holds 2½ cwt., and so the meter registers the weight of coal unladen. This process is not only remarkable for its celerity but for another characteristic. Sailors, when they have to “pull away” together, generally time their pulling to some rude chant; their “Yo, heave, yo,” is thought not only to regulate but to mitigate the weight of their labour. The coalwhippers do their work in perfect silence: they do it indeed like work, and hard work, too. The basket-man and the meter are equally silent, so that nothing is heard but the friction of the ropes, the discharge of the coal from the basket into the machine, and from the machine into the barge. The usual amount of work done by the whippers in a day (but not as an average, one day with another) is to unload, or whip, ninety-eight tons! To whip one ton, sixteen basketfuls are required; so that to whip a single ton these men jump up and down 144 feet: for a day’s work of ninety-eight tons, they jump up and down 13,088 feet, more in some instances; for in the largest ship the way has five steps, and ten men are employed. The coalwhippers, therefore, raise 1¼ cwt. very nearly four miles high, or twice as high as a balloon ordinarily mounts in the air: and, in addition to this, the coalwhippers themselves ascend very nearly 1½ mile perpendicularly in the course of the day. On some days they whip upwards of 150 tons—200 have been whipped, when double this labour must be gone through. The ninety-eight tons take about seven hours. The basket-man’s work is the most critical, and accidents, from his falling into the hold, are not very unfrequent. The complement of men for the unlading of a vessel is, as I have said, nine: four in the hold, four whippers, and the basket-man—the meter forms a tenth, but he acts independently of the others. They seldom work by candlelight, and, whenever possible, avoid working in very bad weather; but the merchant, as I have shown, has great power in regulating their labour for his own convenience. The following statement was given to me by a coalwhipper on board this vessel:—

“We should like better wages, but then we have enemies. Now suppose you, sir, are a coal-merchant, and this gentleman here freights a ship of the captain—you understand me? The man who freights the ships that way is paid, by the captain, ninepence a-ton, for a gang of nine men, such as you’ve seen—nine coalwhippers—but these nine men, you understand me, are paid by the merchant (or buyer) only eightpence a ton; so that by every ton he clears a penny, without any labour or trouble whatsomever. I and my fellows is dissatisfied, but can’t help ourselves. This merchant, too, you understand me, finds there’s rather an opening in the Act of Parliament about whippers. By employing a man as his servant on his premises for fourteen days, he’s entitled to work as a coalwhipper. We call such made whipper ‘boneyfides.’ There’s lots of them, and plenty more would be made if we was to turn rusty. I’ve heard, you understand me, of driving a coach through an Act of Parliament, but here they drive a whole fleet through it.”

The coal whippers all present the same aspect—they are all black. In summer, when the men strip more to their work, perspiration causes the coal-dust to adhere to the skin, and blackness is more than ever the rule. All about the ship partakes of the grimness of the prevailing hue. The sails are black; the gilding on the figure-head of the vessel becomes blackened, and the very visitor feels his complexion soon grow sable. The dress of the whippers is of every description; some have fustian jackets, some have sailors’ jackets, some loose great coats, some Guernsey frocks. Many of them work in strong shirts, which once were white with a blue stripe: loose cotton neckerchiefs are generally worn by the whippers. All have black hair and black whiskers—no matter what the original hue; to the more stubbly beards and moustachios the coal-dust adheres freely between the bristles, and may even be seen, now and then, to glitter in the light amidst the hair. The barber, one of these men told me, charged nothing extra for shaving him, although the coal-dust must be a formidable thing to the best-tempered razor. In approaching a coal-ship in the river, the side has to be gained over barges lying alongside—the coal crackling under the visitor’s feet. He must cross them to reach a ladder of very primitive construction, up which the deck is to be reached. It is a jest among the Yorkshire seamen that every thing is black in a collier, especially the soup. When the men are at work in whipping or filling, the only spot of white discernible on their hands is a portion of the nails.

There are no specific hours for the payment of these men: they are entitled to their money as soon as their work is reported to be completed. Nothing can be better than the way in which the whippers are now paid. The basket-man enters the office of the pay-clerk of the coal commission at one door, and hands over an adjoining counter an amount of money he has received from the captain. The pay-clerk ascertains that the amount is correct. He then divides the sum into nine portions, and, touching a spring to open a door, he cries out for “Gang such a number.” The nine men, who, with many others, are in attendance in rooms provided for them adjacent to the pay-office, appear immediately, and are paid off. I was present when nine whippers were paid for the discharge of 363½ tons. The following was the work done and the remuneration received:—

		Day.	Tons.
Dec.	14th	1st	35
„	15th	2nd	56
Sunday intervenes.
„	17th	3rd	84
„	18th	4th	98
„	19th	5th	90½
			363½

These 363½ tons, at 8d. per ton, realized to each man, for five days’ work, 1l. 6s. 4¼d.; 10s. of which had been paid to each as subsistence money during the progress of the work. In addition to the work so paid to each, there was deducted a farthing in every shilling as office fees, to defray the expenses of the office. From this farthing reduction, moreover, the basket-man is paid 1½d. in the pound, as commission for bringing the money from the captain. Out of the sum to be divided on the occasion I specify there was an indivisible fraction of 1¼d. This, as it cannot be shared among nine men, goes to what is called “The Fraction Fund,” which is established for the relief of persons suffering from accidents on board coal-ships. These indivisible fractions realize between 30l. and 40l. yearly.

Connected with the calling of the whippers I may mention the existence of the Purlmen. These are men who carry kegs of malt liquor in boats, and retail it afloat, having a license from the Waterman’s Company to do so. In each boat is a small iron grating, containing a fire, so that any customer can have the chill off, should he require that luxury. The purlman rings a bell to announce his visit to the men on board. There are several purlmen, who keep rowing all day about the coal fleet; they are not allowed to sell spirits. In a fog the glaring of the fire in the purlmen’s boats, discernible on the river, has a curious effect, nothing but the fire being visible.

I was now desirous of obtaining some information from the men collectively. Accordingly I entered the basket-men’s waiting-room, where a large number of them were “biding their turn;” and no sooner had I made my appearance in the hall, and my object became known to the men, than a rush was made from without, and the door was obliged to be bolted to prevent the over-crowding of the room. As it was, the place was crammed so full, that the light was completely blocked by the men piled up on the seats and lockers, and standing before the windows. The room was thus rendered so dark that I was obliged to have the gas lighted, in order to see to take my notes; I myself was obliged to mount the opposite locker to take the statistics of the meeting.

There were eighty-six present. To show how many had no employment whatever last week, forty-five hands were held up. One had had no employment for a fortnight; twenty-four no work for eight days. Of those who had worked during the previous week, eight had received 20s.; sixteen between 15s. and seventeen between 10s. and 15s.; ten between 5s. and 10s.; one had received under 5s.; twelve had received nothing. The average of employment as to time is this:—None are employed for thirty weeks during the year; all for twenty-five weeks or upwards, realizing 12s. perhaps, yearly, per week—so many of the men said; but the office returns show 1s. 1½d. per day as the average for the last nine months. “Waterage” costs the whipper an average of 6d. a-week the year through. “Waterage” means the conveyance from the vessels to the shore. Fourteen of the men had wives or daughters who work at slop needlework, the husbands being unable to maintain the family by their own labour. A coalwhipper stated that there were more of the wives of the coalwhippers idle, because they couldn’t get work, than were at work. All the wives and daughters would have worked if they could have got it. “Why, your honour,” one man said, “we are better off in this office than under the old system. We were then compulsory drunkards, and often in debt to a publican after clearing the ship.” The men employed generally spent 12s. to 15s. a-week. Those unemployed had abundant credit at the publican’s. One man said, “I worked for a publican who was also a butcher; one week I had to pay 9s. for drink, and 11s. for meat, and he said I hadn’t spent sufficient. I was one of his constant men.” At the time a ship was cleared, the whipper had often nothing to take home. “Nothing but sorrow,” said one. The publican swept all; and some publicans would advance 2s. 6d. towards the next job, to allow a man to live. Many of the whippers now do not drink at all. The average of the drinking among the men, when at hard work, does not exceed three half-pints a-day. The grievances that once afflicted the coalwhipper, are still felt by the ballast-men. The men all stated the fact as to the 9d. allowed, and the 8d. per ton paid for whipping. They all represented that a lighterman, engaged by the gas companies, was doing them great injury, by employing a number of ‘bonafides,’ and taking the best ships away from the regular office, and giving them to the ‘bonafides’ who “whip” the vessel at a lower rate of wages—about 6d. a-ton. He is connected with a beer-shop, and the men are expected to buy his beer. If this man gets on with his system, (all this the men concurred in stating,) the bad state of things prevailing under the publican’s management might be brought back. Sixteen years ago each whipper received 11¼d. per ton, prices steady, and the men in union. “If it wasn’t for this office,” one man said, “not one man who worked sixteen years ago would be alive now.” The Union was broken up about twelve years ago, and prices fell and fluctuated down as low as 6d., and even 5½d., sometimes rising and falling 1¼d. a-week. The prices continued fluctuating until the present office was established, in 1844. The ship-owners and merchants agreed, at the commencement of the office, to give the whippers 9d. a-ton, and in three months reduced it to 8d. The publicans, it was stated, formed themselves into a compact body for the purpose of breaking down the present system, and they introduced hundreds of fresh hands to undersell the regular workers. In 1847 wages rose again to 9d.; the whippers appealing to the trade, urging the high price of provisions, and their appeal being allowed. This 9d. a-ton continued until the 1st of June last. At that time the ‘bonafides’ were generally introduced, and greatly increased, and getting three times the work the regular men did, they (the regular men) consented again to lower the prices. The ‘bonafides’ are no better off than the regular hands; for though they have much more work they have less per ton, and have to spend more in drink. The coalwhippers represented themselves as benefited by the cheapness of provisions. With dear provisions they couldn’t, at their present earnings, live at all. The removal of the backing system had greatly benefited the whippers. On being asked how many had things in pawn, there was a general laugh, and a cry of “All of us.” It is common to pawn a coat on Monday and take it out on Saturday night, paying a month’s interest. One man said, “I have now in pawn seven articles, all wearing apparel, my wife’s or my own, from 15s. down to 9d.” Four had in pawn goods to the amount of 5l. and upwards; five to 4l.; six to 3l.; thirteen to 2l.; thirteen to 1l.; under 1l. nineteen; five had nothing in pawn. When asked if all made a practice of pawning their coats during the week, there was a general assent. Some could not redeem them in time to attend church or chapel on a Sunday. One man said, that if all his effects were burnt in his absence, he would lose no wearing apparel. “Our children, under the old system, were totally neglected,” they said; “the public-house absorbed everything.” Under that system as many as 500 of the children of coalwhippers were transported; now that has entirely ceased; those charged with crime now were reared under the old system. “The legislature never did a better thing than to emancipate us,” said the man; “they have the blessing and prayers of ourselves, our wives, and children.”

After the meeting I was furnished with the following accounts of a basket-man, of which I have calculated the averages:—

First Quarter.—January 2, 1849, to March 28.
Employed		50 days
Delivered		2570¼ tons
Amount earned at 9d. per ton		£10	15	2½
Deduct expenses of office	4s. 6d.	0	12	10
Ditto waterage	8s. 4d.
		£10	2	4½
Average weekly earnings about		0	16	6
Second Quarter.—April 7 to June 30.
Employed		44 days
Delivered		2609 tons
Amount earned at 9d. per ton		£10	10	8
Deduct waterage	7s. 4d.	0	11	8
Office expenses	4s. 4d.
		£9	19	0
Average weekly earnings		0	15	3½
Third Quarter—July 4 to September 24.
Employed		42 days
Delivered		2485 tons
Amount earned at 8d. per ton		£9	4	4¾
Deduct waterage	7s. 0d.	£0	10	10¼
Office expenses	3s. 10¼d.
		£8	13	6½
Average weekly earnings		0	14	2
Fourth Quarter—Oct. 4 to Dec. 20.
Employed		49 days
Delivered		2858½ tons
Amount earned at 8d. per ton		£9	16	4¾
Deduct waterage	8s. 2d.	0	12	3¾
Office expenses	4s. 1¾d.
		£9	4	1
Average weekly earnings		0	14	1¾
First Quarter		£10	2	4¼
Second Quarter		9	19	0
Third Quarter		8	13	6½
Fourth Quarter		9	4	1
		£37	19	0
Average weekly earnings		0	14	6
Employed—	First Quarter	50 days.
	Second Quarter	44	„
	Third Quarter	42	„
	Fourth Quarter	49	„
		185 days.
	Idle	180 days.

Second Account.
Coalwhippers.
Employed	193 days
Delivered	11,573¾ tons
Amount earned at 9d. per ton	£46	15	10¼
Deduct waterage	1	12	2
	£45	3	8¼
Average weekly earnings	0	17	4½

Third Account.
Employed	168 days
Delivered	9874½ tons
Amount earned	£37	19	0
Deduct waterage	1	8	0
Gross earnings	£36	11	0
Average weekly earnings	0	14	0½

The above accounts are rather above than under the average.

GANG OF COAL-WHIPPERS AT WORK BELOW BRIDGE.

[From a Sketch.]

I then proceeded to take the statement of some of the different classes of the men. The first was a coalwhipper, whom the men had selected as one knowing more about their calling than the generality. He told me as follows:—

“I am about forty, and am a married man with a family of six children. I worked under the old system, and that to my sorrow. If I had been paid in money, according to the work I then did, I could have averaged 30s. a-week. Instead of receiving that amount in money, I was compelled to spend in drink 15s. to 18s. per week, when work was good; and the publican even then gave me the residue very grudgingly, and often kept me from eleven to twelve on Saturday night, before he would pay me. The consequences of this system were, that I had a miserable home to go to: I would often have faced Newgate as soon. My health didn’t suffer, because I didn’t drink the liquor I was forced to pay for. I gave most of it away. The liquors were beer, rum, and gin, all prepared the night before, adulterated shamefully for our consumption, as we dursn’t refuse it,—dursn’t even grumble. The condition of my poor wife and children was then most wretched. Now the thing is materially altered, thank God; my wife and children can go to chapel at certain times, when work is pretty good, and our things are not in pawn. By the strictest economy, I can do middling well—very well when compared with what things were. When the new system first came into operation, I felt almost in a new world. I felt myself a free man; I wasn’t compelled to drink; my home assumed a better aspect, and keeps it still. Last Monday night I received 19s. 7d. for my work (five days) in the previous week. I shall now (Thursday) have to wait until Monday next before I can get to work at my business. Sometimes I get a job in idle times at the docks, or otherwise, and wish I could get more. I may make, one week with another, by odd jobs, 1s. a-week. Perhaps for months I can’t get a job. All that time I have no choice but to be idle. One week with another, the year through (at 8d. per ton), I may earn 14s. The great evil is the uncertainty of the work. We have all to take our rotation. This uncertainty has this effect upon many of the men—they are compelled to live on credit. One day a man may receive 19s., and be idle for eight days after. Consequently, we go to the dealer where we have credit. The chandler supplies me with bread, to be paid for next pay-day, charging me a halfpenny a loaf more. A man with a wife and family of six children, as I have, will consume sixteen or seventeen quartern loaves a-week; consequently, he has to pay 8d. a-week extra on account of the irregularity or uncertainty. My rotation would come much oftener but for the backing system and the ‘bonafides.’ I also pay the butcher from a halfpenny to a penny per pound extra for credit when my family requires meat, sometimes a bit of mutton, sometimes a bit of beef. I leave that to the wife, who does it with economy. I this way pay the butcher 6d. a-week extra. The additional cost to me of the other articles, cheese, butter, soap, &c., which I get on credit, will be 6d. a-week. Altogether that will be 3l. 18s. a-year. My rent for a little house with two nice little rooms is 3s. per week; so that the extra charge for credit would just pay my rent. Many coalwhippers deal with tallymen for their wearing apparel, and have to pay enormous prices. I have had dealings with a tallyman, and suffered for it, but for all that I must make application for a supply of blankets from him for my family this winter. I paid him 45s. for wearing apparel—a shawl for my wife, some dresses for the children, a blanket, and other things. Their intrinsic value was 30s. Many of us—indeed most of us, if not all of us—are always putting things in and out of the pawnshops. I know I have myself paid more than 10s. a-year for interest to the pawnbroker. I know some of my fellow-workmen who pay nearly 5l. a-year. I once put in a coat that cost me 3l. 12s. I could only get 30s. on it. I was never able to redeem it, and lost it. The articles lost by the coalwhippers pledged at the pawnshop are three out of four. There are 2000 coalwhippers, and I am sure that each has 50s. in pawn, making 5000l. in a-year. Interest may be paid on one half this amount, 2500l. The other half of the property, at least, is lost. As the pawnbroker only advances one-third of the value, the loss in the forfeiture of the property is 7500l., and in interest 2500l., making a total of 10,000l. lost every year, greatly through the uncertainty of labour. A coalwhipper’s life is one of debt and struggles—it is a round of relieving, paying, and credit. We very rarely have a halfpenny in the pocket when we meet our credit. If any system could possibly be discovered which would render our work and our earnings more certain, and our payments more frequent, it would benefit us as much as we have been benefited by the establishment of the office.”

I visited this man’s cottage, and found it neat and tidy. His children looked healthy. The walls of the lower room were covered with some cheap prints; a few old books, well worn, as if well used, were to be seen; and everything evinced a man who was struggling bravely to rear a large family well on small means. I took the family at a disadvantage, moreover, as washing was going on.

Hearing that accidents were frequent among the class, I was anxious to see a person who had suffered by the danger of the calling. A man was brought to me with his hand bound up in a handkerchief. The sleeve of his coat was ripped open and dangled down beside his injured arm. He walked lame; and on my inquiring whether his leg was hurt, he began pulling up his trousers and unlacing his boot, to show me that it had not been properly set. He had evidently once been a strong, muscular man, but little now remained as evidence of his physical power but the size of his bones. He furnished me with the following statement:—

“I was a coalwhipper. I had a wife and two children. Four months ago, coming off my day’s work, my foot slipped, and I fell and broke my leg. I was taken to the hospital, and remained there ten weeks. At the time of my accident I had no money at all by me, but was in debt to the amount of 10s. to my landlord. I had a little furniture, and a few clothes of myself and wife. While I was in the hospital, I did not receive anything from our benefit society, because I had not been able to keep up my subscription. My wife and children lived while I was in the hospital by pawning my things, and going from door to door to every one she knowed to give her a bit. The men who worked in the same gang as myself, made up 4s. 6d. for me, and that, with two loaves of bread that they had from the relieving officer, was all they got. While I was in the hospital the landlord seized for rent the few things that my wife had not pawned, and turned her and my two little children into the street. One was a boy three years old, and the other a baby just turned ten months. My wife went to her mother, and she kept her and my little ones for three weeks, till she could do so no longer. My mother, poor old woman, was most as bad off as we were. My mother only works on the ground, out in the country, at gardening. She makes about 7s. a-week in the summer, and in the winter she has only 9d. a-day to live upon; but she had at least a shelter for her child, and she willingly shared that with her daughter and her daughter’s children. She pawned all the clothes she had, to keep them from starving; but at last everything was gone from the poor old woman, and then I got my brother to take my family in. My brother worked at garden-work, the same as my mother-in-law did. He made about 15s. a-week in the summer, and about half that in the winter time. He had a wife and two children of his own, and found it hard enough to keep them, as times go. But still he took us all in, and shared what he had with us, rather than let us go to the workhouse. When I was told to leave the hospital—which I was forced to do upon my crutches, for my leg was very bad still—my brother took me in too. He had only one room, but he got in a bundle of straw for me, and we lived and slept there for seven weeks. He got credit for more than a pound’s worth of bread, and tea, and sugar for us; and now he can’t pay, and the man threatens to summon him for it. After I left my brother’s, I came to live in the neighbourhood of Wapping, for I thought I might manage to do a day’s work at coalwhipping, and I couldn’t bear to live upon his little earnings any longer—he could scarcely keep himself then. At last I got a ship to deliver; but I was too weak to do the work, and in pulling at the ropes my hands got sore, and festered for want of nourishment.” [He took the handkerchief off and showed that it was covered with plaster. It was almost white from deficient circulation.] “After this I was obliged to lay up again, and that’s the only job of work I’ve been able to do for these last four months. My wife can’t do anything; she is a delicate, sickly little woman as well, and has the two little children to mind, and to look after me likewise. I had one pennyworth of bread this morning. We altogether had half-a-quartern loaf among the four of us, but no tea nor coffee. Yesterday we had some bread, and tea, and butter; but wherever my wife got it from I don’t know. I was three days but a short time back without a taste of food.” [Here he burst out crying.] “I had nothing but water that passed my lips. I had merely a little at home, and that my wife and children had. I would rather starve myself than let them do so: indeed, I’ve done it over and over again. I never begged: I’ll die in the streets first. I never told nobody of my life. The foreman of my gang was the only one besides God that knew of my misery; and his wife came to me and brought me money and brought me food, and himself, too, many a time.” [“I had a wife and five children of my own to maintain, and it grieved me to my heart,” said the man who sat by, “to see them want, and I unable to do more for them.”] “If any accident occurs to any of us who are not upon the society, they must be as bad off as I am. If I only had a little nourishment to strengthen me, I could do my work again; but, poor as I am, I can’t get strength to do it, and not being totally incapacitated from ever resuming my labour, I cannot get any assistance from the superannuation fund of our men.”

I told the man I wished to see him at his own home, and he and the foreman who had brought him to me, and who gave him a most excellent character, led me into a small house in a court near the Shadwell entrance to the London Docks. When I reached the place I found the room almost bare of furniture. A baby lay sprawling on its back on a few rags beside the handful of fire. A little shoeless boy, with only a light washed-out frock to cover him, ran shyly into a corner of the room as we entered. There was only one chair in the room, and that had been borrowed down stairs. Over the chimney hung to dry a few ragged infant’s chemises that had been newly washed. In front of the fire, on a stool, sat the thinly-clad wife; and in the corner of the apartment stood a few old tubs. On a line above these were two tattered men’s shirts, hanging to dry, and a bed was thrown on some boxes. On a shelf stood a physic-bottle that the man had got from the parish doctor, and in the empty cupboard was a slice of bread—all the food, they said, they had in the world, and they knew not where on earth to look for more.

I next wished to see one of the improvident men, and was taken to the lodging of one who made the following statement:—

“I have been a coalwhipper for twenty years. I worked under the old publican’s system, when the men were compelled to drink. In those days 18s. didn’t keep me in drink. I have now been a teetotaler for five years. I have the bit of grub now more regular than I had. I earn less than 13s. a-week. I have four children, and have buried four. My rent is 1s. 6d.” [“To-night,” interrupted the wife, “if he won’t part with his coat or boots, he must go without his supper.”] “My wife,” the man continued, “works at bespoke work—stay-making, but gets very little work, and so earns very little—perhaps 1s. 6d. a week.”

This family resided in a wretched part of Wapping, called, appropriately enough, “the Ruins.” Some houses have been pulled down, and so an open space is formed at the end of a narrow airless alley. The wet stood on the pavement of the alley, and the cottage in which the whipper I visited lived, seemed with another to have escaped when the other houses were pulled down. The man is very tall, and almost touched the ceiling of his room when he stood upright in it. The ceiling was as wet as a newly-washed floor. The grate was fireless, the children barefoot, and the bedstead (for there was a bedstead) was bedless, and all showed cheerless poverty. The dwelling was in strong contrast with that of the provident whipper whom I have described.

I conclude with the statement of a coalbacker, or coalporter—a class to which the term coalheaver is usually given by those who are unversed in the mysteries of the calling. The man wore the approved fantail, and well-tarred short smock-frock, black velveteen knee breeches, dirty white stockings, and lace-up boots.

“I am a coalbacker,” he said. “I have been so these twenty-two years. By a coalbacker, I mean a man who is engaged in carrying coals on his back from ships and craft to the waggons. We get 2¼d. for every fifth part of a ton, or 11¼d. per ton among five men. We carry the coals in sacks of 2 cwt., the sack usually weighs from 14lbs. to 20lbs., so that our load is mostly 238lbs. We have to carry the load from the hold of the ship, over four barges, to the waggon. The hold of a ship is from sixteen to twenty feet deep. We carry the coals this height up a ladder, and the ship is generally from sixty to eighty feet from the waggon. This distance we have to travel over planks, with the sacks on our backs. Each man will ascend this height and travel this distance about ninety times in a day; hence he will lift himself, with 2 cwt. of coals on his back, 1460 feet, or upwards of a quarter of a mile high, which is three times the height of St. Paul’s, in twelve hours. And besides this, he will travel 6300 feet, or 1¼ miles, carrying the same weight as he goes. The labour is very hard—there are few men who can continue at it.” My informant said it was too much for him; he had been obliged to give it up eight months back; he had overstrained himself at it, and been obliged to lay up for many months. “I am forty-five years of age,” he continued, “and have as many as eight children. None of them bring me in a sixpence. My eldest boy did, a little while back, but his master failed, and he lost his situation. My wife made slop-shirts at a penny each, and could not do more than three a-day. How we have lived through all my illness, I cannot say. I occasionally get a little job, such as mending the hats of my fellow-workmen: this would sometimes bring me in about 2s. in the week, and then the parish allowed four quartern loaves of bread and 2s. 6d. a-week for myself, wife, and eight children. Since I have overstrained myself, I have not done more than two days’ work altogether. Sometimes my mates would give me an odd seven tons to do for them, for I was not able to manage more.” Such accidents as overstraining are very common among the coalbackers. The labour of carrying such a heavy weight from the ship’s hold is so excessive, that after a man turns forty he is considered to be past his work, and to be very liable to such accidents. It is usually reckoned that the strongest men cannot last more than twenty years at the business. Many of the heartiest of the men are knocked up through the bursting of blood-vessels and other casualties, and even the strongest cannot continue at the labour three days together. After the second day’s work, they are obliged to hire some unemployed mate to do the work for them. The coalbackers work in gangs of five men, consisting of two shovel-men and three backers, and are employed to deliver the ship by the wharfinger. Each gang is paid 11¼d. per ton, which is at the rate of 2¼d. per ton for each of the five men. The gang will do from thirty to forty tons in the course of the day. The length of the day depends upon the amount of work to be done, according to the wharfinger’s orders. The coalbackers are generally at work at five o’clock in the morning, winter and summer. In the winter time, they have to work by the light of large fires in hanging caldrons, which they call bells. Their day’s work seldom ends before seven o’clock in the evening. They are paid every night, and a man after a hard day’s work will receive 6s. Strong, hearty men, who are able to follow up the work, can earn from 25s. to 30s. per week. But the business is a fluctuating one. In the summer time there is little or nothing to do. The earnings during the slack season are about one half what they are during the brisk. Upon an average, their earnings are 1l. a-week all the year round. The class of coalbackers is supposed to consist of about 1500 men. They have no provident or benefit society. Between seventeen and eighteen years ago, each gang used to have 1s. 0½d. per ton, and about a twelvemonth afterwards it fell to the present price of 11¼d. per ton. About six weeks back, the merchants made an attempt to take off the odd farthing; the reason assigned was the cheapness of provisions. They nearly carried it; but the backers formed a committee among themselves, and opposed the reduction so strongly that the idea was abandoned. The backers are paid extra for sifting, at the rate of 2d. per sack. For this office they usually employ a lad, paying him at the rate of 10s. per week. Upon this they will usually clear from 2s. to 4s. per week. The most injurious part of the backer’s work is carrying from the ship’s hold. That is what they object to most of all, and consider they get the worst paid for. They do a great injury to the coalwhippers, and the backers say it would be as great a benefit to themselves as to the coalwhippers, if the system was done away with. By bringing the ships up alongside the wharf, the merchant saves the expense of whipping and lightering, together with the cost of barges, &c. Many of the backers are paid at the public-house; the wharfinger gives them a note to receive their daily earnings of the publican, who has the money from the merchant. Often the backers are kept waiting an hour at the public-house for their money, and they have credit through the day for any drink they may choose to call for. While waiting, they mostly have two or three pots of beer before they are paid; and the drinking once commenced, many of them return home drunk, with only half their earnings in their pockets. There is scarcely a man among the whole class of backers, but heartily wishes the system of payment at the public-house may be entirely abolished. The coalbackers are mostly an intemperate class of men. This arises chiefly from the extreme labour and the over-exertion of the men, the violent perspiration and the intense thirst produced thereby. Immediately a pause occurs in their work, they fly to the public-house for beer. One coalbacker made a regular habit of drinking sixteen half-pints of beer, with a pennyworth of gin in each, before breakfast every morning. The sum spent in drink by the ‘moderate’ men varies from 9s. to 12s. per week, and the immoderate men on the average spend 15s. a-week. Hence, assuming the class of coalbackers to be 2000 in number, and to spend only 10s. a-week in drink each man, the sum that would be annually expended in malt liquors and spirits by the class would amount to no less than 52,000l. The wives and children of the coalbackers are generally in great distress. Sometimes no more than one quarter of the men’s earnings is taken home at night.

“When I was moderate inclined,” said one of them to me, “I used to have a glass of rum the first thing when I came out of a morning, just to keep the cold out—that might be as early as about five o’clock in the morning, and about seven o’clock I should want half a pint of beer with gin in it, or a pint without. After my work I should be warm, and feel myself dry; then I should continue to work till breakfast-time; then I should have another half pint with gin in it, and so I should keep on through the day, having either some beer or gin every two hours. I reckon that unless a man spent about 1s. 6d. to 2s. in drink, he would not be able to continue his labour through the day. In the evening, he is tired with his work, and being kept at the public-house for his pay, he begins drinking there, and soon feels unwilling to move, and he seldom does so until all his wages are gone.” My informant tells me that he thinks the class would be much improved if the system of paying the men at the public-house was done away, and the men paid weekly instead of daily. The hard drinking he thinks a necessity of the hard labour. He has heard, he says, of coalbackers being teetotalers, but none were able to keep the pledge beyond two months. If they drink water and coffee, it will rather increase than quench their thirst. Nothing seems to quench the thirst of a hard-working man so well as ale.

“The only difference between the pay of the basketman and the whipper is the 1½d. in the pound which the former receives for carrying the money from the captain of the ship to the clerk of the pay-office. He has also for this sum to keep a correct account of the work done by the men every day, and to find security for his honesty to the amount of 10l. To obtain this, they usually pay 2s. 6d. a-year to the Guarantee Society, and they prefer doing this to seeking the security of some baker or publican in the neighbourhood, knowing that if they did so, they would be expected to become customers of the parties.”

I now resume my inquiry whether stimulating drinks are necessary for the performance of severe labour.

I have already published the statement of a coalbacker, who declared that it was an absolute necessity of that kind of labour that the men engaged in backing coals from the hold of a ship should, though earning only 1l. per week, spend at least 12s. weekly in beer and spirits, to stimulate them for their work. This sum, the man assured me, was a moderate allowance, for 15s. was the amount ordinarily expended by the men in drink every week. Now if this quantity of drink be a necessity of the calling, it follows that the men pursuing the severest labour of all—doing work that cripples the strongest in from twelve to twenty years—are the worst paid of all labourers, their actual clear gains being only from 5s. to 8s. per week. This struck me as being so terrible a state of things that I could hardly believe it to be true, though I was assured by several coalwhippers who were present on the occasion, that the coalbacker who had made the statement had in no way exaggerated the account of the sufferings of his fellow-workmen. I determined, nevertheless, upon inquiring into the question myself, and ascertaining, by the testimony and experience of different classes of individuals engaged in this, the greatest labour, perhaps, performed by any men, whether drink was really a necessity or luxury to the working man.

Accordingly, I called a meeting of the coalwhippers, that I might take their opinion on the subject, when I found that out of eighty individuals only four were satisfied that fermented liquors could be dispensed with by the labouring classes. I was, however, still far from satisfied upon the subject, and I determined, as the question is one of the greatest importance to the working men,—being more intimately connected with their welfare, physical, intellectual, and moral, than any other,—to give the subject my most patient and unbiassed consideration. I was anxious, without advocating any opinion upon the subject, to collect the sentiments of the coal labourers themselves; and in order that I might do so as impartially as possible, I resolved upon seeing—1st, such men as were convinced that stimulating liquors were necessary to the labouring man in the performance of his work; 2ndly, such men as once thought differently, and, indeed, had once taken the pledge to abstain from the use of all fermented liquors, but had been induced to violate their vow in consequence of their health having suffered; and 3rdly, such men as had taken the pledge and kept it without any serious injury to their constitutions. To carry the subject out with the fulness and impartiality that its importance seemed to me to demand, I further determined to prosecute the inquiry among both classes of coal labourers—the coalwhippers and coalbackers as well. The result of these investigations I shall now subjoin. Let me, however, in the first place, lay before the reader the following

Above the Average.

Button-makers, one individual in every	7·2
Tool-makers	10·1
Surveyors	11·8
Paper-makers and Stainers	12·1
Brass-founders	12·4
Gold-beaters	14·5
Millers	16·6
French Polishers	17·3
Cutlers	18·2
Corkcutters	19·7
Musicians	22·0
Opticians	22·3
Bricklayers	22·6
Labourers	22·8
General and Marine-store Dealers	23·2
Brushmakers	24·4
Fishmongers	28·2
Coach and Cabmen	28·7
Glovers	29·4
Smiths	29·5
Sweeps	32·2
Hairdressers	42·3
Tailors	43·7
Tinkers and Tinmen	45·7
Saddlers	49·3
Masons	49·6
Glassmakers, &c.	50·5
Curriers	50·6
Printers	52·4
Hatters and Trimmers	53·1
Carpenters	53·8
Ironmongers	56·0
Dyers	56·7
Sawyers	58·4
Turners	59·3
Engineers	59·7
Butchers	63·7
Laundresses	63·8
Painters	66·1
Brokers	67·7
Medical Men	68·0
Brewers	70·2
Clerks	73·4
Shopkeepers	77·1
Shoemakers	78·0
Coachmakers	78·8
Milliners	81·4
Bakers	82·0
Pawnbrokers	84·7
Gardeners	97·6
Weavers	99·3
Drapers	102·3
Tobacconists	103·4
Jewellers	104·5
Artists	106·3
Publicans	108·0
Average	113·8

Below the Average.

Carvers and Gilders	125·2
Artificial Flower Makers	128·1
Bookbinders	148·6
Greengrocers	157·4
Watchmakers	204·2
Grocers	226·6
Clockmakers	286·0
Parish officers	373·0
Clergymen	417·0
Servants	585·7

The above calculations have been made from the Official Returns of the Metropolitan Police. The causes of the different degrees of intemperance here exhibited, I leave to others to discover.

After the meeting of coalwhippers just described, I requested some of the men who had expressed the various opinions respecting the necessity for drinking some kind of fermented liquor during their work to meet me, so that I might take down their sentiments on the subject more fully. First of all, came two of the most intelligent, who believed malt liquor to be necessary for the performance of their labour. One was a basketman or fireman, and the other an “up-and-down” man, or whipper; the first doing the lighter, and the second the heavier kind of work. The basketman, who I afterwards discovered was a good Greek and Latin scholar, said: “If I have anything like a heavy day’s work to do, I consider three pints of porter a-day necessary. We are not like other labouring men, having an hour to dinner. Often, to save tide, we take only ten minutes to our meals. One thing I wish to remark is, that what renders it necessary to have the three pints of beer in winter, and two pots in summer, is the coal-dust arising from the work, which occasions great thirst. In the summer time the basketman is on the plank all day, and continually exposed to the sun, and in the winter to the inclemency of the weather. What with the labour and the heat, the perspiration is excessive. A basketman with a bad gang of men has no sinecure. In the summer he can wear neither coat nor waistcoat; very few can bear the hat on the head, and they wear nightcaps instead. The work is always done, in summer time, with only the shirt and trousers on. The basketman never takes off his shirt, like the whippers. The necessity for drink in the summer does not arise so much from the extent of the labour, as from the irritation caused by the coal-dust getting into the throat. There is not so much dust from the coals in the winter as in the summer, the coals being more damp in wet than in fine weather. It is merely the thirst that makes the drink requisite, as far as the basketman is concerned. Tea would allay the thirst, but there is no opportunity of having this on board ship. If there were an opportunity of having tea at our work, the basketman might manage to do with it as well as with beer. Water I don’t fancy, especially the water of the river; it is very impure, and at the time of the cholera we were prohibited from drinking it. If we could get pure water, I do not think it would do as well for us, especially in winter time. In winter time it would be too cold, and too great a contrast to the heat of the blood. It would, in my opinion, produce stagnation in the circulation. We have had instances of men dying suddenly through drinking water when in a state of excitement.” [He distinguishes between excitement and perspiration: he calls the basketman’s labour an exciting one, and the whipper’s work a heating one.] “The men who died suddenly were whippers. I never heard of a basketman dying from drinking cold water when at his work; I don’t think they ever tried the experiment. The whippers have done so through necessity, not through choice. Tea is a beverage that I don’t fancy, and I conceive it to be equally expensive, so I prefer porter. When I go off to my work early in the morning, I take about a pint of coffee with me in a bottle, and warm it up on board at the galley-fire for my breakfast; that I find quenches my thirst for the time as well as porter. Porter would be too insipid the first thing in the morning; I never drank coffee through the day while at my work, so I cannot say what the effect would be. I drink porter when at my work, not as giving me greater strength to go through my labour, but merely as a means of quenching my thirst, it being as cheap as any other drink, with the exception of water, and less trouble to procure. Water I consider dangerous at our work, but I can’t say that it is so from my own experience. I was in the hospital about seven years ago, and the doctor there asked me how many pints of beer I was in the habit of drinking per day. This was before the office was established. I told him, on the lowest calculation, six or seven; it was the case then under the old system; and he then ordered me two pints of porter a-day, as I was very weak, and he said I wanted a stimulus. I am not aware that it is the habit of the publicans to adulterate their porter with salt and water. If such is the case, it would, without a doubt, increase rather than diminish the thirst. I have often found that the beer sold by some of the publicans tends more to create than allay thirst. I am confident, that if the working men generally knew that salt and water was invariably mixed with the porter by the publicans, they would no longer hold to the notion that it could quench their thirst; but, to convince them of that, it would be almost necessary that they should see the publican adulterating the beer with their own eyes. If it really is the case that beer is adulterated with salt and water, it must be both injurious and heating to the labouring man. Some of the men who are in the habit of drinking porter at their work, very probably attribute the thirst created by the salt and water in the porter to the thirst created by the coal-dust or the work, and continue drinking it from the force of habit. The habit of drinking is doubtlessly the effect of the old system, when the men were forced to drink by the publicans who paid them. A most miraculous change, and one unparalleled in history, has been produced by altering the old mode of employing and paying the men. The reformation in the morals and character of the men is positively wonderful. The sons are no longer thieves, and the daughters are no longer prostitutes. Formerly it was a competition who could drink the most, for he who could do so got the most work. The introduction for a job was invariably, ‘You know, Mr. So and So, I’m a good drinking man.’ Seeing the benefit that has resulted from the men not drinking so much as formerly, I am of opinion that, though I take my beer every day myself, a great good would ensue if the men would drink even less than they do now, and eat more; it would be more conducive to their health and strength. But they have not the same facility for getting food over their work as there is for getting beer. You see, they can have credit for beer when they can’t get a morsel of food on trust. There are no floating butchers or bakers, like there are floating publicans or purlmen. If there were, and men could have trust for bread and meat while at their work on the river, I am sure they would eat more and drink less, and be all the better for it. It would be better for themselves and for their families. The great evil of the drink is, that when a man has a little he often wants more, and doesn’t know where to stop. When he once passes the ‘rubi-can,’ as I call it, he is lost. If it wasn’t for this evil, I think a pint or two of porter would make them do their work better than either tea or water. Our labour is peculiar. The air is always full of coal-dust, and every nerve and muscle of the body is strained, and every pore of the body open, so that he requires some drink that will counteract the cold.”

The next two that I saw were men who did the heaviest work; that is, “up-and-down men,” or coalwhippers, as they are usually called. They had both of them been teetotalers. One had been so for eight years, and the other had tried it for three months. One who stood at least six feet and a half high, and was habited in a long blue great coat that reached to his heels, and made him look even taller than he was, said,—“I was a strict teetotaler for many years, and I wish I could be so now. All that time I was a coalwhipper at the heaviest work, and I have made one of a gang that have done as many as 180 tons in one day. I drank no fermented liquor the whole of the time; I had only ginger-beer and milk, and that cost me 1s. 6d. It was in the summer time. I didn’t ‘buff it’ on that day; that is, I didn’t take my shirt off. I did this work at the Regent’s Canal; and there was a little milk-shop close on shore, and I used to run there when I was dry. I had about two quarts of milk and five bottles of ginger-beer, or about three quarts of fluid altogether. I found that amount of drink necessary. I perspired very violently; my shirt was wet through, and my flannels wringing wet with the perspiration over the work. The rule among us is, that we do 28 tons on deck, and 28 tons filling in the ship’s hold. We go on in that way throughout the day, spelling at every 28 tons. The perspiration in the summer time streams down our foreheads so rapidly, that it will often get into our eyes before we have time to wipe it off. This makes the eyes very sore. At night, when we get home, we cannot bear to sit with a candle. The perspiration is of a very briny nature, for I often taste it as it runs down to my lips. We are often so heated over our work that the perspiration runs into the shoes; and often, from the dust and heat, jumping up and down, and the feet being galled with the small dust, I have had my shoes full of blood. The thirst produced by our work is very excessive; it is completely as if you had a fever upon you. The dust gets into the throat, and very nearly suffocates you. You can scrape the coal-dust off the tongue with the teeth; and do what you will it is impossible to get the least spittle into the mouth. I have known the coal-dust to be that thick in a ship’s hold, that I have been unable to see my mate, though he was only two feet from me. Your legs totter under you, both before and after you are a teetotaler. I was one of the strongest men in the business; I was able to carry 7 cwt. on my back for fifty yards, and I could lift nine half-hundreds with my right-arm. After finishing my day’s work I was like a child with weakness. When we have done 14 or 28 tons, we generally stop for a drop of drink, and then I have found that anything that would wet my mouth would revive me. Cold tea, milk, or ginger-beer, were refreshing, but not so much as a pint of porter. Cold water would give a pain in the inside, so that a man would have to lie down and be taken ashore, and, perhaps, give up work altogether. Many a man has been taken to the hospital merely through drinking cold water over his work. They have complained of a weight and coldness in the chest; they say it has chilled the fat of the heart. I can positively state,” continued the man, “that during the whole of eight years I took no fermented drink. My usual drink was cold tea, milk, ginger-beer, or coffee, whichever I could catch: the ginger-beer was more lively than the milk; but I believe I could do more work upon the milk. Tea I found much better than coffee. Cold tea was very refreshing; but if I didn’t take it with me in a bottle, it wasn’t to be had. I used to take a quart of cold tea with me in a bottle, and make that do for me all day, as well as I could. The ginger-beer was the most expensive, and would cost me a shilling, or more than that if I could get it. The milk would cost me sixpence or eightpence. For tea and coffee the expense would be about twopence the day. But often I have done the whole day’s work without any drink, because I would not touch beer, and then I was more fit to be carried home than walk. I have known many men scarcely able to crawl up the ladder out of the hold, they were so fatigued. For myself, being a very strong man, I was never so reduced, thank God. But often, when I’ve got home, I’ve been obliged to drink three pints of milk at a stretch, before I could touch a bit of victuals. As near as I can guess it used to cost me, when at work, a shilling a-day for ginger-beer, milk, and other teetotal drinks. When I was not at work my drink used to cost me little or nothing. For eight years I stuck to the pledge, but I found myself failing in strength and health; I found that I couldn’t go through a day’s work as clever as I used before I left off drink, and when first I was a teetotaler. I found myself failing in every inch of my carcase, my limbs, my body and all. Of my own free-will I gave it up. I did not do it in a fit of passion, but deliberately, because I was fully satisfied that it was injuring my health. Shortly after taking the pledge I found I could have more meat than I used to have before, and I found that I neither got strong nor weak upon it. After about five years my appetite began to fail, and then I found my strength leaving me; so I made up my mind to alter the system. When I returned to beer, I found myself getting better in health and stronger daily. Before I was a teetotaler I used to drink heavy, but after teetotalism I was a temperate man. I am sure it is necessary for a hard-working man that he should drink beer. He can’t do his work so well without it as he can with it, in moderation. If he goes beyond his allowance he is better without any. I have taken to drinking beer again within the last twelve months. As long as a man does not go beyond his allowance in beer, his drink will cost him quite as much when he is teetotaler as it will when he has not taken the pledge. The difference between the teetotal and fermented drinks I find to be this:—When I drank milk it didn’t make me any livelier; it quenched my thirst, but didn’t give me any strength. But when I drank a pint or a quart of beer, it did me so much good after a day’s labour, that after drinking it I could get up and go to my work again. This feeling would continue for a considerable time; indeed, I think the beer is much better for a hard-working man than any unfermented drink. I defy any man in England to contradict me in what I say, and that is—a man who takes his reasonable quantity of beer, and a fair share of food, is much better with it than without.”

Another man, who had been a teetotaler for three months at one time, and seven years at another, was convinced that it was impossible for a hard-working man to do his work as well without beer as with. “He had tried it twice, and he spoke from his own experience, and he would say that a little—that is, two pints, or three for a very hard day’s labour,—would never hurt no man. Beyond that a man has no right to go; indeed, anything extra only makes him stupid. Under the old system, I used to be obliged to buy rum; and, over and over again, I’ve had to pay fifteen-pence for half-a-pint of rum in a ginger-beer bottle; and have gone into the street and sold it for sixpence, and got a steak with the money. No man can say drink has ruined my constitution, for I’ve only had two pennyworth of antibilious pills in twenty-five years; and I will say, a little beer does a man more good than harm, and too much does a man more harm than good.”

The next two “whippers” that I saw were both teetotalers. One had taken the pledge eight months before, and the other four years; and they had both kept it strictly. One had been cellarman at a public-house, and he said, “I neither take spruce nor any of the cordials: water is my beverage at dinner.” The other had been an inveterate drunkard. The cellarman is now a basketman, and the other an up-and-down man, or whipper, in the same gang. The basketman said, “I can say this from my own experience,—that it is not necessary for a working man, doing the very hardest labour, to drink fermented liquors. I was an up-and-down man for two years, without tasting a drop of beer or spirits. I have helped to whip 189 tons of coal in one day, without any; and that in the heat of summer. What I had with me was a bottle of cocoa; and I took with that plenty of steak, potatoes, and bread. If the men was to take more meat and less beer, they would do much better. It’s a delusion to think beer necessary. Often, the men who say the beer is necessary will deliver a ship, aye, and not half-a-dozen half-pints be drank aboard. The injury is done ashore. The former custom of our work—the compulsory system of drinking that we were under,—has so imbedded the idea of drink in the men, that they think it is actually necessary. It’s not the least to be wondered at, that there’s so many drunkards among them. I do not think we shall ever be able to undo the habit of drinking among the whippers in this generation. As far as I am concerned, since I’ve been a teetotaler, I have enjoyed a more regular state of health than I used before. Now that I am a basketman, I drink only water with my dinner; and during my work I take nothing. I have got a ship in hands—going to work on Monday morning. I shall have to run backwards and forwards on a one-and-twenty-foot plank, and deliver 300 tons of coals: and I shall do that upon water. That man,” pointing to the teetotaler who accompanied him, “will be in it, and he’ll have to help to pull the coals twenty foot above the deck; and he’ll do it all upon water. When I was a coalwhipper myself, I used to drink cocoa. I took it cold with me of a morning, and warmed it aboard. They prophesied it would kill me in a week; and I know it’s done me every good in life. I have drunk water when I was a-working up-and-down, and when I was in the highest perspiration, and never found it injure me. It allays the thirst more than anything. If it didn’t allay the thirst I should want to drink often: but if I take a drink of water from the cask I find my thirst immediately quenched. Many of the men who drink beer will take a drink of water afterwards, because the beer increases their thirst, and heats them. That, I believe, is principally from the salt water in it: in fact, it stands to reason, that if beer is half brine it can’t quench thirst. Ah! it’s shocking stuff the purlmen make up for them on the river. When I was drinking beer at my employment, I used seldom to exceed three pints of beer a-day: that is what I took on board. What I had on shore was not, of course, to help me to do my labour. I know the beer used to inflame my thirst, because I’ve had to drink water after it over and over again. I never made a habit of drinking,—not since the establishment of the office. Previous to that, of course, I was obliged to drink. I’ve got ‘jolly’ now and then, but I never made a habit of it. It used to cost me about two shillings or two shillings and sixpence a-week, on the average, for drink, at the uttermost; because I couldn’t afford more. Since I’ve taken the pledge, I’m sure it hasn’t cost me sixpence a-week. A teetotaler feels less thirst than any other man. I don’t know what natural thirst is, except I’ve been eating salt provisions. I belong to a total abstinence society, and there are about a dozen coalwhippers, and about the same number of coalbackers, members of it. Some have been total abstainers for twelve years, and are living witnesses that fermented drinks are not necessary for working men. There are about two hundred to two hundred and fifty coalwhippers, I have been given to understand, who are teetotalers. Those coalwhippers who have been total abstainers for twelve years, are not weaker or worse in health for the want of beer.” [This statement was denied by a person present; but a gentleman, who was intimately acquainted with the whole body, mentioned the names of several men who had been, some ten years, and some upwards of twelve years, strict adherents to the principles of teetotalism.] “The great quantity of drinking is carried on ashore. I should say the men generally drink twice as much ashore as they do afloat. Those who drink beer are always thirsty. Through drinking over their work, a thirst is created aboard, which they set to drinking, when ashore, to allay; and, after a hard day’s labour, a very little overcomes a man. One or two pots of beer, and the man is loth to stir. He is tired; and the drink, instead of refreshing him, makes him sleepy and heavy. The next morning after drinking he is thirstier still; and then he goes to work drinking again. The perspiration will start out of him in large drops, like peas. You will see it stream down his face and his hands, with the coal-dust sticking to them, just like as if he had a pair of silk gloves on him. It’s a common saying with us, about such a man, that ‘he’s got the gloves on.’ The drunkards always perspire the most over their work. The prejudice existing among the men in favour of drink is such, that they believe they would die without it. I am quite astonished to see such an improvement among them as there is; and I do think that, if the clergymen of the neighbourhood did their duty, and exerted themselves, the people would be better still. At one time there were as many as five hundred coalwhippers total abstainers; and the men were much better clothed, and the homes and appearance of the whippers were much more decent. What I should do if I drank, I don’t know. I got 1l. for clearing a ship last week, and shan’t get any more till Monday night; and I have six children and a wife to keep out of that. For this last fortnight I have only made 10s. a-week, so I am sure I couldn’t even afford a shilling a-week for drink, without robbing my family.”

The second teetotaler, who had been an inveterate drunkard in his time, stated as follows. Like most of the coalwhippers, he thought once that he could not do his work without beer. He used to drink as much as he could get. He averaged two pots at his work, and when he came on shore he would have two pots more.

“He had been a coalwhipper for upwards of twenty years, and for nineteen years and three months of that time he was a hard drinker,—a regular stiff ’un,” said he; “I not only used,” he added, “to get drunk, but I taught my children to do so,—I have got sons as big as myself, coalbackers, and total abstainers. Often I have gone home on a Sunday morning drunk myself, and found two of my sons drunk,—they’d be unable to sit at the table. They were about fourteen then, and when they went out with me I used to teach them to take their little drops of neat rum or gin. I have seen the youngest ‘mop up’ his half-quartern as well as I did. Then I was always thirsty; and when I got up of a morning I used to go stalking round to the first public-house that was open, to see if I could get a pint or a quartern. My mouth was dry and parched, as if I had got a burning fever. If I had no work that day I used to sit in a public-house and spend all the money I’d got. If I had no money I would go home and raise it somehow. I would ask the old woman to give me the price of a pint, or perhaps the young uns were at work, and I was pretty safe to meet them coming home. Talk about going out of a Sunday! I was ashamed to be seen out. My clothes were ragged, and my shoes would take the water in at one end and let it out at the other. I keep my old rags at home, to remind me of what I was—I call them the regimentals of the guzzler. I pawned everything I could get at. For ten or twelve years I used a beer-shop regularly. That was my house of call. Now my home is very happy. All my children are teetotalers. My sons are as big as myself, and they are at work carrying 1¾ cwt. to 2 cwt. up a Jacob’s ladder, thirty-three steps high. They do this all day long, and have been doing so for the last seven days. They drink nothing but water or cold tea, and say they find themselves the better able to do their work. Coalbacking is about the hardest labour a man can perform. For myself, too, I find I am quite as able to do my work without intoxicating drinks as I was with them. There’s my basketman,” said he, pointing to the other teetotaler, “and he can tell you whether what I say is true or not. I have helped to whip 147 tons of coal in the heat of summer. The other men were calling for beer every time they could see or hear a purlman, but I took nothing—I don’t think I perspired so much as they did. When I was in the drinking custom, I have known the perspiration run down my arms and legs as if I’d been in a hot bath. Since I’ve taken the pledge I scarcely perspire at all. I’ll work against any man that takes beer, provided I have a good teetotal pill—that is, a good pound of steak, with plenty of gravy in it. That’s the stuff to work upon—that’s what the working man wants—plenty of it, and less beer, and he’d beat a horse any day. I am satisfied the working man can never be raised above his present position until he can give over drinking. That is the reason why I am sticking to the pledge, that I may be a living example to my class that they can and may work without beer. It has made my home happy, and I want it to make every other working man’s as comfortable. I tried the principle of teetotalism first on board a steam-boat. I was stoker, and we burnt 27 cwt. of coals every hour we were at sea—that’s very nearly a ton and a-half per hour. There, with the heat of the fire, we felt the effects of drinking strong brandy. Brandy was the only fermented drink we were allowed. After a time I tried what other stimulants we could use. The heat in the hold, especially before the fires, was awful. There were nine stokers and four coal-trimmers. We found that the brandy that we drank in the day made us ill, our heads ached when we got up in the morning, so four of us agreed to try oatmeal and water as our drink, and we found that suited us better than intoxicating liquor. I myself got as fat as a bull upon it. It was recommended to me by a doctor in Falmouth, and we all of us tried it eight or nine voyages. Some time after I left the company I went to strong drink again, and continued at it till the 1st of May last, and then my children’s love of drink got so dreadful that I got to hate myself as being the cause of it. But I couldn’t give up the drinking. Two of my mates, however, urged me to try. On the 1st of May I signed the pledge. I prayed to God on the night I went to give me strength to keep it, and never since have I felt the least inclination to return. When I had left off a fortnight I found myself a great deal better; all the cramps that I had been loaded with when I was drinking left me. Now I am happy and comfortable at home. My wife’s about one of the best women in the world. She bore with me in all my troubles, and now she glories in my redemption. My children love me, and we club all our earnings together, and can always on Sunday manage a joint of sixteen or seventeen pounds. My wife, now that we are teetotalers, need do no work; and, in conclusion, I must say that I have much cause to bless the Lord that ever I signed the teetotal pledge.

“After I leave my work,” added the teetotaler, “I find the best thing I can have to refresh me is a good wash of my face and shoulders in cold water. This is twice as enlivening as ever I found beer. Once a fortnight I goes over to Goulston-square, Whitechapel, and have a warm bath. This is one of the finest things that ever was invented for the working man. Any persons that use them don’t want beer. I invited a coalwhipper-man to come with me once. ‘How much does it cost?’ he asked. I told him, ‘A penny.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’d sooner have half-a-pint of beer. I haven’t washed my body for these twenty-two years, and don’t see why I should begin to have anything to do with these new-fangled notions at my time of life.’ I will say, that a good wash is better for the working man than the best drink.”

The man ultimately made a particular request that his statement might conclude with a verse that he had chosen from the Temperance Melodies:—

“And now we love the social cheer

Of the bright winter eve;

We have no cause for sigh or tear,

We have no cause to grieve.

Our wives are clad, our children fed;

We boast where’er we go—

’Twas all because we sign’d the pledge,

A long, long time ago.”

At the close of my interview with these men I received from them an invitation to visit them at their own houses whenever I should think fit. It was clearly their desire that I should see the comforts and domestic arrangements of their homes. Accordingly on the morrow, choosing an hour when there could have been no preparation, I called at the lodgings of the first. I found the whole family assembled in the back kitchen, that served them for a parlour. As I entered the room the mother was busy at work, washing and dressing her children for the day. There stood six little things, so young that they seemed to be all about the same height, with their faces shining with the soap and water, and their cheeks burning red with the friction of the towel. They were all laughing and playing about the mother, who, with comb and brush in hand, found it no easy matter to get them to stand still while she made “the parting.” First of all the man asked me to step up-stairs and see the sleeping-room. I was much struck with the scrupulous cleanliness of the apartment. The blind was as white as snow, half rolled up, and fastened with a pin. The floor was covered with patches of different coloured carpet, showing that they had been bought from time to time, and telling how difficult it had been to obtain the luxury. In one corner was a cupboard with the door taken off, the better to show all the tumblers, teacups, and coloured-glass mugs, that, with two decanters, well covered with painted flowers, were kept more for ornament than use. On the chimneypiece was a row of shells, china shepherdesses, and lambs, and a stuffed pet canary in a glass-case for a centre ornament. Against the wall, surrounded by other pictures, hung a half-crown water-colour drawing of the wife, with a child on her knee, matched on the other side by the husband’s likeness, cut out in black paper. Pictures of bright-coloured ducks and a print of Father Moore the teetotaler completed the collection.

“You see,” said the man, “we manages pretty well; but I can assure you we has a hard time of it to do it at all comfortably. Me and my wife is just as we stands—all our other things are in pawn. If I was to drink I don’t know what I should do. How others manage is to me a mystery. This will show you I speak the truth,” he added, and going to a secretary that stood against the wall he produced a handful of duplicates. There were seventeen tickets in all, amounting to 3l. 0s. 6d., the highest sum borrowed being 10s. “That’ll show you I don’t like my poverty to be known, or I should have told you of it before. And yet we manage to sleep clean;” and he pulled back the patchwork counterpane, and showed me the snow-white sheets beneath. “There’s not enough clothes to keep us warm, but at least they are clean. We’re obliged to give as much as we can to the children. Cleanliness is my wife’s hobby, and I let her indulge in it. I can assure you last week my wife had to take the gown off her back to get 1s. on it. My little ones seldom have a bit of meat from one Sunday to another, and never a bit of butter.”

I then descended into the parlour. The children were all seated on little stools that their father had made for them in his spare moments, and warming themselves round the fire, their little black shoes resting on the white hearth. From their regular features, small mouths, large black eyes, and fair skins, no one would have taken them for a labouring man’s family. In answer to my questions, he said: “The eldest of them (a pretty little half-clad girl, seated in one corner) is ten, the next seven, that one five, that three, and this (a little thing perched upon a table near the mother) two. I’ve got all their ages in the Bible up-stairs.” I remarked a strange look about one of the little girls. “Yes, she always suffered with that eye; and down at the hospital they lately performed an operation on it.” An artificial pupil had been made.

The room was closed in from the passage by a rudely built partition. “That I did myself in my leisure,” said the man; “it makes the room snugger.” As he saw me looking at the clean rolling-pin and bright tins hung against the wall, he observed: “That’s all my wife’s doing. She has got them together by sometimes going without dinner herself, and laying out the 2d. or 3d. in things of that sort. That is how she manages. To-day she has got us a sheep’s head and a few turnips for our Sunday’s dinner,” he added, taking off the lid of the boiling saucepan. Over the mantelpiece hung a picture of George IV., surrounded by four other frames. One of them contained merely three locks of hair. The man, laughing, told me, “Two of them are locks of myself and my wife, and the light one in the middle belonged to my wife’s brother, who died in India. That’s her doing again,” he added.

After this I paid a visit to the other teetotaler at his home, and there saw one of his sons. He had six children altogether, and also supported his wife’s mother. If it wasn’t for him, the poor old thing, who was seventy-five, and a teetotaler too, must have gone to the workhouse. Three of his six children lived at home; the other three were out at service. One of the lads at home was a coalbacker. He was twenty-four years of age, and on an average could earn 17s. 6d. It was four years since he had taken to backing. He said, “I am at work at one of the worst wharfs in London; it is called ‘the slaughter-house’ by the men, because the work is so excessive. The strongest man can only last twelve years at the work there; after that he is overstrained and of no use. I do the hardest work, and carry the coals up from the hold. The ladder I mount has about thirty-five steps, and stands very nearly straight on end. Each time I mount I carry on my back 238 pounds. No man can work at this for more than five days in the week. I work three days running, then have a day’s rest, and then work two days more. I myself generally do five days’ work out of the six. I never drink any beer, and have not for the last eight months. For three years and four months I took beer to get over the work. I used to have a pint at eleven, a pot at dinner, a pint at four o’clock, and double allowance, or a couple of pots, after work. Very often I had more than double allowance. I seldom in a day drank less than that; but I have done more. I have drunk five pots in four minutes and a-half. So my expenditure for beer was 1s. 4d. a-day regularly. Indeed, I used to allow myself three half-crowns to spend in beer a-week, Sundays included. When a coal-worker is in full work, he usually spends 2s. a-day, or 12s. a-week, in beer. The trade calls these men temperate. When they spend 15s. the trade think they are intemperate. Before I took the pledge I scarcely ever went to bed sober after my labour. I was not always drunk, but I was heavy and stupid with beer. Twice within the time I was a coalbacker I have been insensibly drunk. I should say three-fourths of the coalbackers are drunk twice a-week. Coalbacking is as heavy a class of labour as any performed. I don’t know any that can beat it. I have been eight months doing the work, and can solemnly state I have never tasted a drop of fermented liquor. I have found I could do my work better and brisker than when I drank. I never feel thirsty over my work now; before, I was always dry, and felt as if I could never drink enough to quench it. Now I never drink from the time I go to work till the time I have my dinner; then my usual beverage is either cold coffee or oatmeal and water. From that time I never drink till I take my tea. On this system I find myself quite as strong as I did with the porter. When I drank porter it used to make me go along with a sack a little bit brisker for half-an-hour, but after that I was dead, and obliged to have some more. There are men at the wharf who drink beer and spirits that can do six days’ labour in the week. I can’t do this myself. I have done as much when I took fermented liquors, but I only did so by whipping myself up with stimulants. I was obliged to drink every hour a pint of beer to force me along. That was only working for the publican; for I had less money at the week’s end than when I did less work. Now I can keep longer and more steadily at my work. In a month I would warrant to back more coals than a drunkard. I think the drunkard can do more for a short space of time than the teetotaler. I am satisfied the coalbackers as a class would be better off if they left off the drinking; and then masters would not force them to do so much work after dark as they do now. They always pay at public-houses. If that system was abandoned, the men would be greatly benefited by it. Drinking is not a necessity of the labour. All I want when I’m at work is a bit of coal in the mouth. This not only keeps the mouth cool, but as we go up the ladder we very often scrunch our teeth—the work’s so hard. The coal keeps us from biting the tongue, that’s one use; the other is, that by rolling it along in the mouth it excites the spittle, and it moistens the mouth. This I find a great deal better than a pot of porter.”

In order to complete my investigations concerning the necessity of drinking in the coalwhipping trade, I had an interview with some of the more intelligent of the men who had been principally concerned in the passing of the Act that rescued the class from the “thraldom of the publican.”

“I consider,” said one, “that drink is not a necessity of our labour, but it is a necessity of the system under which we were formerly working. I have done the hardest work that any labouring man can do, and drank no fermented liquor. Nor do I consider fermented liquors to be necessary for the severest labour. This I can say of my own experience, having been a teetotaler for sixteen months. But if the working man don’t have the drink, he must have good solid food, superior to what he is in the habit of having. A pot of coffee and a good beef dumpling will get one over the most severe labour. But if he can’t have that he must have the stimulants. A pint of beer he can always have on credit, but he can’t the beef dumpling. If there is an excuse for any persons drinking there is for the coalwhippers, for under the old system they were forced to become habitual drunkards to obtain work.”

I also questioned another of the men, who had been a prime mover in obtaining the Act. He assured me, that before the “emancipation” of the men the universal belief of the coalwhippers, encouraged by the publicans, was, that it was impossible for them to work without liquor. In order to do away with that delusion, the three principal agents in procuring the Act became teetotalers of their own accord, and remained so, one for sixteen months and another for nine years, in order to prove to their fellow workmen that drinking over their labour could be dispensed with, and that they might have “cool brains to fight through the work they had undertaken.”

Another of the more intelligent men who had been a teetotaler:—“I performed the hardest labour I ever did, before or after, with more ease and satisfaction than ever I did under the drinking system. It is quite a delusion to believe that with proper nutriment the health declines under principles of total abstinence.”

After this I was anxious to continue my investigations among the coalporters, and see whether the more intelligent among them were as firmly convinced as the better class of coalwhippers were, that intoxicating drinks were not necessary for the performance of hard labour. I endeavoured to find one of each class, pursuing the same plan as I had adopted with the coalwhippers: viz. I sought first, one who was so firmly convinced of the necessity of drinking fermented liquors during his work, that he had never been induced to abandon them; secondly, I endeavoured to obtain the evidence of one who had tried the principle of total abstinence and found it fail; and thirdly, I strove to procure the opinion of those who had been teetotalers for several years, and who could conscientiously state that no stimulant was necessary for the performance of their labour. Subjoined is the result of my investigations.

Concerning the motives and reasons for the great consumption of beer by the coalporters, I obtained the following statement from one of them:—“I’ve been all my life at coalportering, off and on, and am now thirty-nine. For the last two years or so I’ve worked regularly as a filler to Mr. ——’s waggons. I couldn’t do my work without a good allowance of beer. I can’t afford so much now, as my family costs me more; but my regular allowance one time was three pots a-day. I have drank four pots, and always a glass of gin in the morning to keep out the cold air from the water. If I got off then for 7s. a-week for drink I reckoned it a cheap week. I can’t do my work without my beer, and no coalporter can, properly. It’s all nonsense talking about ginger-beer, or tea, or milk, or that sort of thing; what body is there in any of it? Many a time I might have been choked with coal-dust, if I hadn’t had my beer to clear my throat with. I can’t say that I’m particularly thirsty like next morning, after drinking three or four pots of beer to my own work, but I don’t get drunk.” He frequently, and with some emphasis, repeated the words, “But I don’t get drunk.” “You see, when you’re at such hard work as ours, one’s tired soon, and a drop of good beer puts new sap into a man. It oils his joints like. He can lift better and stir about brisker. I don’t care much for beer when I’m quiet at home on a Sunday; it sets me to sleep then. I once tried to go without to please a master, and did work one day with only one half-pint. I went home as tired as a dog. I should have been soon good for nothing if I’d gone on that way—half-pinting in a day. Lord love you! we know a drop of good beer. The coalporters is admitted to be as good judges of beer as any men in London—maybe, the best judges; better than publicans. No salt and water will go down with us. It’s no use a publican trying to gammon us with any of his cag-mag stuff. Salt and water for us! Sartainly, a drop of short (neat spirit) does one good in a cold morning like this; it’s uncommon raw by the waterside, you see. Coalporters doesn’t often catch cold—beer and gin keeps it out. Perhaps my beer and gin now cost me 5s. a-week, and that’s a deal out of what I can earn. I dare say I earn 18s. a-week. Sometimes I may spend 6s. That’s a third of my earnings, you say, and so it is; and as it’s necessary for my work, isn’t it a shame a poor man’s pot of beer, and drop of gin, and pipe of tobacco, should be so dear? Taxes makes them dear. I can read, sir, and I understand these things. Beer—four pots a-day of it doesn’t make me step unsteady. Hard work carries it off, and so one doesn’t feel it that way. Beer’s made of corn as well as bread, and so it stands to reason it’s nourishing. Nothing’ll persuade me it isn’t. Let a teetotal gentleman try his hand at coal-work, and then he’ll see if beer has no support in it. Too much is bad, I know, but a man can always tell how much he wants to help him on with his work. If beer didn’t agree with me, of course I wouldn’t drink it: but it does. Sartainly we drops into a beer-shop of a night, and does tipple a little when work’s done; and the old women (our wives) comes for us, and they get a sup to soften them, and so they may get to like it overmuch, as you say, and one’s bit of a house may go to rack and manger. I’ve a good wife myself, though. I know well enough all them things is bad—drunkenness is bad! All I ask for is a proper allowance at work; the rest is no good. I can’t tell whether too much or no beer at coal-work would be best; perhaps none at all: leastways it would be safer. I shouldn’t like to try either. Perhaps coalporters does get old sooner than other trades, and mayn’t live so long; but that’s their hard work, and it would be worse still without beer. But I don’t get drunk.”

I conversed with several men on the subject of their beer-drinking, but the foregoing is the only statement I met with where a coalporter could give any reason for his faith in the virtues of beer; and vague as in some points it may be, the other reasons I had to listen to were still vaguer. “Somehow we can’t do without beer; it puts in the strength that the work takes out.” “It’s necessary for support.” Such was the pith of every argument.

In order fully to carry out this inquiry, I obtained the address of a coalbacker from the ships, who worked hard and drank a good deal of beer, and who had the character of being an industrious man. I saw him in his own apartment, his wife being present while he made the following statement:—“I’ve worked at backing since I was twenty-four, and that’s more than twelve years ago. I limit myself now, because times is not so good, to two pots of beer a-day; that is, when I’m all day at work. Some takes more. I reckon, that when times was better I drank fifteen pots a-week, for I was in regular work, and middlin’ well off. That’s 780 pots, or 195 gallons a-year, you say. Like enough it may be. I never calculated, but it does seem a deal. It can’t be done without, and men themselves is the best judges of what suits their work—I mean, of how much to take. I’ll tell you what it is, sir. Our work’s harder than people guess at, and one must rest sometimes. Now, if you sit down to rest without something to refresh you, the rest does you harm instead of good, for your joints seem to stiffen; but a good pull at a pot of beer backs up the rest, and we start lightsomer. Our work’s very hard. I’ve worked till my head’s ached like to split; and when I’ve got to bed, I’ve felt as if I’ve had the weight on my back still, and I’ve started awake when I fell off to sleep, feeling as if something was crushing my back flat to my chest. I can’t say that I ever tried to do without beer altogether. If I was to think of such a thing, my old woman there would think I was out of my head.” The wife assented. “I’ve often done with a little when work’s been slackish. First, you see, we bring the coal up from the ship’s hold. There, sometimes, it’s dreadful hot, not a mouthful of air, and the coal-dust sometimes as thick as a fog. You breathe it into you, and your throat’s like a flue, so that you must have something to drink. I fancy nothing quenches you like beer. We want a drink that tastes. Then there’s the coals on your back to be carried up a nasty ladder, or some such contrivance, perhaps twenty feet, and a sack full of coals weighs 2 cwt. and a stone, at least; the sack itself’s heavy and thick: isn’t that a strain on a man? No horse could stand it long. Then, when you get fairly out of the ship, you go along planks to the waggon, and must look sharp, ’specially in slippery or wet weather, or you’ll topple over, and then there’s the hospital or the workhouse for you. Last week we carried along planks sixty feet, at least. There’s nothing extra allowed for distance, but there ought to be. I’ve sweat to that degree in summer, that I’ve been tempted to jump into the Thames to cool myself. The sweat’s run into my boots, and I’ve felt it running down me for hours as I had to trudge along. It makes men bleed at the nose and mouth, this work does. Sometimes we put a bit of coal in our mouths, to prevent our biting our tongues. I do, sometimes, but it’s almost as bad as if you did bite your tongue, for when the strain comes heavier and heavier on you, you keep scrunching the coal to bits, and swallow some of it, and you’re half choked; and then it’s no use, you must have beer. Some’s tried a bit of tobacco in their mouths, but that doesn’t answer; it makes you spit, and often spit blood. I know I can’t do without beer. I don’t think they ’dulterate it for us; they may for fine people, that just tastes it, and, I’ve heard, has wine and things. But we must have it good, and a publican knows who’s good customers. Perhaps a bit of good grub might be as good as beer to strengthen you at work, but the straining and sweating makes you thirsty, more than hungry; and if poor men must work so hard, and for so little, for rich men, why poor men will take what they feel will satisfy them, and run the risk of its doing them good or harm; and that’s just where it is. I can’t work three days running now without feeling it dreadful. I get a mate that’s fresher to finish my work. I’d rather earn less at a trade that would give a man a chance of some ease, but all trades is overstocked. You see we have a niceish tidy room here, and a few middling sticks, so I can’t be a drunkard.”

I now give the statement of a coalporter who had been a teetotaler:—“I have been twenty-two years a coalheaver. When I began that work I earned 50s. a-week as backer and filler. I am now earning, one week with another, say 15s. We have no sick fund among us—no society of any sort—no club—no schools—no nothing. We had a kind of union among us before the great strike, more than fourteen years back, but it was just for the strike. We struck against masters lowering the pay for a ton to 2¼d. from 2½d. The strike only lasted two or three weeks, and the men were forced to give way; they didn’t all give way at once, but came to gradual. One can’t see one’s wife and children without bread. There’s very few teetotalers among us, though there’s not many of us now that can be called drunken—they can’t get it, sir. I was a teetotaler myself for two years, till I couldn’t keep to it any longer. We all break. It’s a few years back, I forget zactly when. At that time teetotalers might drink shrub, but that never did me no good; a good cup of tea freshened me more. I used then to drink ginger-beer, and spruce, and tea, and coffee. I’ve paid as much as 5s. a-week for ginger-beer. When I teetotaled, I always felt thirsty. I used to long for a drink of beer, but somehow managed to get past a public-house, until I could stand it no longer. A clerk of ours broke first, and I followed him. I certainly felt weaker before I went back to my beer; now I drink a pint or two as I find I want it. I can’t do without it, so it’s no use trying. I joined because I felt I was getting racketty, and giving my mind to nothing but drink, instead of looking to my house. There may be a few teetotalers among us, but I think not. I only knew two. We all break—we can’t keep it. One of these broke, and the other kept it, because, if he breaks, his wife’ll break, and they were both regular drunkards. A coalporter’s worn out before what you may call well old. There’s not very old men among us. A man’s done up at fifty, and seldom lives long after, if he has to keep on at coalportering. I wish we had some sick fund, or something of that kind. If I was laid up now, there would be nothing but the parish for me, my wife, and four childer (here the poor man spoke in a broken voice). The masters often discharge old hands when they get feeble, and put on boys. We have no coals allowed for our own firesides. Some masters, if we buys of them, charges us full price, others a little cheaper.”

I saw this man in the evening, after he had left his work, in his own room. It was a large and airy garret. His wife, who did not know previously of my visit, had in her domestic arrangements manifested a desire common to the better disposed of the wives of the labourers, or the poor—that of trying to make her “bit of place” look comfortable. She had to tend a baby four months old; two elder children were ill clad, but clean; the eldest boy, who is fifteen, is in the summer employed on a river steamboat, and is then of great help to his parents. There were two beds in the room, and the bedding was decently arranged so as to form a bundle, while its scantiness or worn condition was thus concealed. The solitary table had a faded green cloth cover, very threadbare, but still a cover. There were a few cheap prints over the mantelshelf, and the best description I can give is, in a phrase not uncommon among the poor, that the whole was an attempt to “appear decent.” The woman spoke well of her husband, who was kind to her, and fond of his home, and never drank on Sundays.

Last of all, I obtained an interview with two coalporters who had been teetotalers for some years:—

“I have been a coalporter ever since I have been able to carry coals,” said one. “I began at sixteen. I have been a backer all the time. I have been a teetotaler eight years on the 10th of next March. My average earnings where I am now is about 35s. per week. At some wharfs work is very bad, and the men don’t average half that. They were paid every night where I worked last, and sometimes I have gone home with 2½d. Take one with the other, I should say the coalporter’s earnings average about 1l. a-week. My present place is about as good a berth as there is along the waterside. There is only one gang of us, and we do as much work as two will do in many wharfs. Before I was a teetotaler, I principally drank ale. I judged that the more I gave for my drink, the better it was. Upon an average, I used to drink from three to four pints of ale per day. I used to drink a good drop of gin, too. The coalporters are very partial to ‘dog’s nose’—that is, half a pint of ale with a pennyworth of gin in it; and when they have got the money, they go up to what they term ‘the lucky shop’ for it. The coalporters take this every morning through the week, when they can afford it. After my work, I used to drink more than when I was at it. I used to sit as long as the house would let me have any. Upon an average, I should say I used to take three or four pints more of an evening; so that, altogether, I think I may fairly say I drank my four pots of ale regularly every day, and about half a pint of dog’s nose. I reckon my drink used to cost me 13s. a-week when I was at work. At times I was a drunken, noisy gentleman then.”

Another coalporter, who has been a teetotaler ten years on the 25th of last August, told me, that before he took the pledge he used to drink a great deal after he had done his work, but while he was at work he could not stand it. “I don’t think I used to drink above three pints and a half and a pennyworth of gin in the daytime,” said this man. “Of an evening I used to stop at the public-house, generally till I was drunk and unfit to work in the morning. I will vouch for it I used to take about three pots a-day after I had done work. My reckoning used to come to about 1s. 8d. a-day, or, including Sundays, about 10s. 6d. per week. At that time I could average all the year round about 30s. a-week, and I used to drink away 10s. of it regularly. I did, indeed, sir, more to my shame.”

The other coalporter told me his earnings averaged about the same, but he drank more.

“I should say I got rid of nearly one-half of my money. I did like the beer then: I thought I could not live without it. It’s between twelve and thirteen years since the first coalporter signed the pledge. His name was John Sturge, and he was looked upon as a madman. I looked upon him myself in that light. The next was Thomas Bailey, and he was my teetotal father. When I first heard of a coalporter doing without beer, I thought it a thing impossible. I made sure they wouldn’t live long; it was part of my education to believe they couldn’t. My grandfather brewed home-brewed beer, and he used to say to me, ‘Drink, my lad, it’ll make thee strong.’ The coalporters say now, if we could get the genuine home-brewed, that would be the stuff to do us good; the publican’s wash is no good. I drank for strength; the stimulation caused by the alcohol I mistook for my own power.”

“Richard Hooper! He’s been a teetotaler now about twelve years. He was the fourth of the coaleys as signed the pledge, and he first instilled teetotalism on my mind,” said the other man. “Where he works now there’s nine out of fifteen men is teetotalers. Seeing that he could do his work much better than when he drinked beer, induced me to become one. He was more regular in his work after he had given it up than whenever I knowed him before.”

“The way in which Thomas Bailey put it into my head was this here,” continued the other. “He invited me to a meeting: I told him I would come, but he’d never make a teetotaler of me, I knowed. I went with the intention to listen to what they could have to say. I was a little bit curious to know how they could make out that beer was no good for a body. The first man that addressed the meeting was a tailor. I thought it might do very well for him; but then, says I, if you had the weight of 238lbs. of coals on your back, my lad, you couldn’t do it without ale or beer. I thought this here, because I was taught to believe I couldn’t do without it. I cared not what any man said about beer, I believed it was life itself. After the tailor a coalporter got up to speak. Then I began to listen more attentively. The man said he once had a happy home and a happy wife, everything the heart could wish for, but through the intoxicating drinks he had been robbed of everything. The man pictured the drunkard’s home so faithfully, that the arrows of conviction stuck fast in my heart, and my conscience said, Thou art a drunkard, too! The coalporter said his home had been made happy through the principle of total abstinence. I was determined to try it from that hour. My home was as miserable as it possibly could be, and I knowed intoxicating drink was the cause on it. I signed the pledge that night after the coalporter was done speaking, but was many months before I was thoroughly convinced I was doing right in abstaining altogether. I kept thinking on it after going home of a night, tired and fatigued with my hard work, some times scarcely able to get up-stairs through being so overwrought; and not being quite satisfied about it, I took every opportunity to hear lectures upon the subject. I heard one on the properties of intoxicating drinks, which quite convinced me that I had been labouring under a delusion. The gentleman analysed the beer in my presence, and I saw that in a pint of it there was 14 ozs. of water that I had been paying 2d. for, 1 oz. of alcohol, and 1 oz. of what they call nutritious matter, but which is the filthiest stuff man ever set eyes upon. It looked more like cobblers’ wax than anything else. It was what the lecturer called the—residyum, I think was the name he gave it. The alcohol is what stimulates a man, and makes him feel as if he could carry two sacks of coal while it lasts, but afterwards comes the depression; that’s what the coalporters call the ‘blues.’ And then he feels that he can do no work at all, and he either goes home and puts another man on in his place, or else he goes and works it off with more drink. You see, where we coalporters have been mistaken is believing alcohol was nutriment, and in fancying that a stimulant was strength. Alcohol is nothing strengthening to the body—indeed, it hardens the food in the stomach, and so hinders digestion. You can see as much any day if you go into the hospitals, and look at the different parts of animals preserved in spirits. The strength that alcohol gives is unnatural and false. It’s food only that can give real strength to the frame. I have done more work since I’ve been a teetotaler in my eight years than I did in my ten or twelve years before. I have felt stronger. I don’t say that I do my work better, but this I will say, without any fear of contradiction, that I do my work with more ease to myself, and with more satisfaction to my employer, since I have given over intoxicating drinks. I scarcely know what thirst is. Before I took the pledge I was always dry, and the mere shadow of the potboy was quite sufficient to convince me that I wanted something. I certainly haven’t felt weaker since I left off malt liquor. I have eaten more and drank less. I live as well now as any of the publicans do, and who has a better right to do so than the man who works? I have backed as many as sixty tons in a day since I took the pledge, and have done it without any intoxicating drink, with perfect ease to myself, and walked five miles to a temperance meeting afterwards. But before I became a teetotaler, after the same amount of work, I should scarcely have been able to crawl home; I should have been certain to have lost the next day’s work at least: but now I can back that quantity of coals week after week without losing a day. I’ve got a family of six children under twelve years of age. My wife’s a teetotaler, and has suckled four children upon the principle of total abstinence. Teetotalism has made my home quite happy, and what I get goes twice as far. Where I work now, four out of five of us are teetotalers. I am quite satisfied that the heaviest work that a man can possibly do may be done without a drop of fermented liquor. I say so from my own experience. All kind of intoxicating drinks is quite a delusion. They are the cause of the working man’s wages being lowered. Masters can get the men who drink at their own price. If it wasn’t for the money spent in liquor we should have funds to fall back upon, and then we could stand out against any reduction that the masters might want to put upon us, and could command a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work: but as it is, the men are all beggars, and must take what the master offers them. The backing of coals out of the holds of ships is man-killing work. It’s scandalous that men should be allowed to force their fellow-men to do such labour. The calves of a man’s leg is as hard as a bit of board after that there straining work; they hardly know how to turn out of bed of a morning after they have been at that for a day. I never worked below bridge, thank God! and I hope I never shall. I’ve not wanted for a day’s work since I’ve been a teetotaler. Men can back out of a ship’s hold better without liquor than with it. We teetotalers can do the work better—that is, with more ease to ourselves—than the drinking men. Many teetotalers have backed coals out of the hold, and I have heard them say over and over again that they did their work with more comfort and ease than they did when they drank intoxicating drink. Coalbacking from the ship’s hold is the hardest work that it is possible for a man to do. Going up a ladder 16 feet high with 238 lbs. weight on a man’s back is sufficient to kill any one; indeed, it does kill the men in a few years, they’re soon old men at that work: and I do say that the masters below bridge should be stopped going on as they’re doing now. And what for? Why, to put the money they save by it into their own pockets, for the public ain’t no better off, the coals is just as dear. Then the whippers and lightermen are all thrown out of work by it; and what’s more, the lives of the backers are shortened many years—we reckon at least ten years.”

“I wish to say this much,” said the other teetotaler: “it’s a practice with some of the coal-merchants to pay their men in public-houses, and this is the chief cause of a great portion of the wages being spent in drink. I once worked for a master upon Bankside as paid his men at a public-house, and I worked a week there, which yearned me 28s. and some odd halfpence. When I went on Saturday night the publican asked me what I was come for. In reply, I said ‘I’m come to settle.’ He said, ‘You’re already settled with,’ meaning I had nothing to take. I had drinked all my lot away, he said, with the exception of 5s. I had borrowed during the week. Then I told him to look back, and he’d find I’d something due to me. He did so, and said there was a halfpenny. I had nothing to take home to my wife and two children. I asked the publican to lend me a few shillings, saying my young un’s had nothing to eat. His reply was, ‘That’s nothing to me, that’s your business.’ After that I made it my business. While I stood at the bar in came the three teetotalers, and picked up the 28s. each that was coming to them, and I thought how much better they was off than me. The publican stopped all my money for drink that I knowed I’d not had, and yet I couldn’t help myself, ’cause he had the paying on me. Then something came over me as I stood there, and I said, ‘From this night, with the help of God, I’ll never taste of another drop of intoxicating liquors.’ That’s ten years ago the 25th of last August, and I’ve kept my pledge ever since, thank God! That publican has been the making of me. The master what discharged me before for getting drunk, when he heard that I was sober sent for me back again. But before that, the three teetotalers who was a working along with me was discharged by their master, to oblige the publican who stopped my money. The publican, you see, had his coals from the wharf. He was a ‘brass-plate coal-merchant’ as well as a publican, and had private customers of his own. He threatened to take his work away from the wharf if the three teetotalers wasn’t discharged; and sure enough the master did discharge them, sooner than lose so good a customer. Many of the masters now are growing favourable to teetotalism. I can say that I’ve done more on the principle of total abstinence than ever I done before. I’m better in health, I’ve no trembling when I goes to my work of a morning; but, on the contrary, I’m ready to meet it. I’m happier at home. We never has no angry words now,” said the man, with a shake of the head, and a strong emphasis on the now. “My children never runs away from me as they used to before; they come and embrace me more. My money now goes for eatables and clothes, what I and my children once was deprived on through my intemperate habits. And I bless God and the publican that made me a teetotaler—that I do sincerely—every night as I go to bed. And as for men to hold out that they can’t do their work without it, I’m prepared to prove that we have done more work without it than ever we have done or could do with it.”

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I have been requested by the coalwhippers to publish the following expression of gratitude on their part towards the Government for the establishment of the Coalwhippers’ Office:—

“The change that the Legislature has produced in us, by putting an end to the thraldom of the publican by the institution of this office, we wish it to be generally known that we and our wives and children are very thankful for.”

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I shall now conclude with the following estimate of the number of the hands, ships, &c. engaged in the coal trade in London.

There are about 400 wharfs, I am informed, from Wapping to Chelsea, as well as those on the City-canal. A large wharf will keep about 50 horses, 6 waggons, and 4 carts; and it will employ constantly from 3 to 4 gangs of 5 men. Besides these, there will be 6 waggoners, 1 cart-carman, and about 2 trouncers—in all, from 24 to 29 men. A small wharf will employ 1 gang of 5 men, about 10 horses, 3 waggons, and 1 cart, 3 waggoners, 1 trouncer, and 1 cart-carman. At the time of the strike, sixteen years ago, there were more than 3000 coalporters, I am told, in London. It is supposed that there is an average of 1½ gang, or about 7 men employed in each wharf; or, in all, 2000 coalporters in constant employment, and about 200 and odd men out of work. There are in the trade about 4 waggons and 1 cart to each wharf, or 1600 waggons and 400 carts, having 5200 horses; to these there would be about 3 waggoners and 1 cart-carman upon an average to each wharf, or 1600 in all. Each wharf would occupy about 2 trouncers, or 900 in the whole.

Hence the statistics of the coal trade will be as follows:—

	No.
Ships	2,177
Seamen	21,600
Tons of coal entering the Port of London each year	3,418,140
Coalmeters	170
Coalwhippers	2,000
Coalporters	3,000
Coalfactors	25
Coalmerchants	502
Coaldealers	295
Coal waggons	1,600
Horses for ditto	5,200
Waggoners	1,600
Trimmers	800

I continue my inquiry into the state of the coal-labourers of the metropolis.

The coalheavers, properly so called, are now no longer known in the trade. The class of coalheavers, according to the vulgar acceptation of the word, is divided into coalwhippers, or those who whip up or lift the coals rapidly from the hold, and the coalbackers, or those who carry them on their backs to the wharf, either from the hold of the ship moored alongside the wharf, or from the lighter into which the coals have been whipped from the collier moored in the middle of the river, or “Pool.” Formerly the coals were delivered from the holds of the ships by the labourers shovelling them on to a series of stages, raised one above the other till they ultimately reached the deck. One or two men were on each stage, and hove the coals up to the stage immediately above them. The labourers engaged in this process were termed “coalheavers.” But now the coals are delivered at once from the hold by means of a sudden jerk, which “whips” them on deck. This is the process of coalwhipping, and it is performed chiefly in the middle of the river, to fill the “rooms” of the barges that carry the coals from the ship to the wharf. Coals are occasionally delivered immediately from the ship on to the wharf by means of the process of “coalbacking,” as it is called. This consists in the sacks being filled in the hold, and then carried on the men’s backs up a ladder from the hold, along planks from the ship to the wharf. By this means, it will be easily understood that the ordinary processes of whipping and lightering are avoided. By the process of coalwhipping, the ship is delivered in the middle of the river, or the “Pool” as it is called, and the coals are lightered, or carried to the wharf, by means of barges, whence they are transported to the wharf by the process of backing. But when the coals are backed out of the ship itself on to the wharf, the two preliminary processes are done away with. The ship is moored alongside, and the coals are delivered directly from the ships to the premises of the wharfinger. By this means the wharfingers, or coalmerchants, below bridge, are enabled to have their coals delivered at a cheaper price than those above bridge, who must receive the cargoes by means of the barges. I am assured that the colliers, in being moored alongside the wharfs, receive considerable damage, and strain their timbers severely from the swell of the steamboats passing to and fro. Again, the process of coalbacking appears to be of so extremely laborious a nature that the health, and indeed the lives, of the men are both greatly injured by it. Moreover, the benefit remains solely with the merchant, and not with the consumer, for the price of the coals delivered below bridge is the same as those delivered above. The expense of delivering the ship is always borne by the shipowner. This is, at present, 8d. per ton, and was originally intended to be given to the whippers. But the merchant, by the process of backing, has discovered the means of avoiding this process; and so he puts the money which was originally paid by the shipowner for whipping the coals into his own pocket, for the consumer is not a commensurate gainer. Since the merchant below bridge charges the same price to the public for his coals as the merchant above, it is clear that he alone is benefited at the expense of the public, the coalwhippers, and even the coalbackers themselves; for on inquiry among this latter class, I find that they object as much as the whippers to the delivery of a ship from the hold, the mounting of the ladders from the hold being of a most laborious and injurious nature. I have been supplied by a gentleman who is intimately acquainted with the expenses of the two processes with the following comparative account:—

Expenses of delivering a Ship of 360 tons by the process of Coalwhipping.

	£	s.	d.
For whipping 360 tons at 8d. per ton	12	0	0
Lighterman’s wages for 1 week engaged in lightering the said 360 tons from ship to wharf	1	10	0
Expenses of backing the said coals from craft to wharf at 11¼d. per ton	16	17	6
	£30	7	6

Expense of delivering a Ship of 360 tons by the process of Coalbacking.

For backing a ship of 360 tons directly from the ship to the wharf

£16

17

6

By the above account it will be seen, that if a collier of 360 tons is delivered in the Pool, the expense is 30l. 7s. 6d., but if delivered at the wharf-side the expense is 16l. 17s. 6d., the difference between the two processes being 13l. 10s. Hence, if the consumer were the gainer, the coals should be delivered below bridge 9d. a ton cheaper than they are above bridge. The nine coalwhippers ordinarily engaged in the whipping of the coals would have gained 1l. 6s. 8d. each man if they had not been “backed” out of the ship; but as the coals delivered by backing below bridge are not cheaper, and the whippers have not received any money, it follows that the 12l. which has been paid by the shipowner to the merchant for the expense of whipping has been pocketed by the merchant, and the expense of lightering, 1l. 10s., saved by him; making a total profit of 13l. 10s., not to mention the cost of wear and tear, and interest of capital sunk in barges. This sum of money is made at the expense of the coalbackers themselves, who are seldom able to continue the labour (so extreme is it) for more than twenty years at the outside, the average duration of the labourers being only twelve years. After this period, the men, from having been overstrained by their violent exertion, are unable to pursue any other calling; and yet the merchants, I am sorry to say, have not even encouraged them to form either a benefit society, a superannuation fund, or a school for their children.

Wishing to perfect the inquiry, I thought it better to see one of the seamen engaged in the trade. Accordingly, I went off to some of the colliers lying in Mill Hole, and found an intelligent man, ready to give me the information I sought. His statement was, that he had been to sea between twenty-six and twenty-seven years altogether. “Out of that time,” he said, “I’ve had nine or ten years’ experience at the coal-trade. I’ve been to the East Indies and West Indies, and served my apprenticeship in a whaler. I have been to the Mediterranean, and to several parts of France. I think that, take the general run, the living and treatment of the men in the coal-trade is better than in any other going. It’s difficult to tell how many ships I’ve been in, and how many owners I’ve served under. I have been in the same ship for three or four years, and I have been only one voyage in one ship. You see, we are obliged to study our own interest as much as we can. Of course the masters won’t do it for us. Speaking generally, of the different ships and different owners I’ve served under, I think the men are generally well served. I have been in some that have been very badly victualled: the small stores in particular, such as tea, sugar, and coffee, have been very bad. They, in general, nip us very short. There is a regular allowance fixed by Act of Parliament; but it’s too little for a man to go by. Some owners go strictly by the Act, and some give more; but I don’t know one that gives under. Indeed, as a general rule, I think the men in the trade have nothing to complain of. The only thing is, the wages are generally small; and the ships are badly manned. In bad weather there is not enough hands to take the sail off her, or else there wouldn’t be so many accidents as there are. The average tonnage of a coal-ship is from 60 up to about 250 tons. There are sometimes large ships; but they come seldom, and when they do, they carry but part coal cargo. They only load a portion with coals that they may be able to come across the bar-harbours in the north. If they were loaded altogether with coals, they couldn’t get over the bar: they would draw too much water. For a ship of about from 100 to 130 tons, the usual complement is generally from five to six hands, boys, captain, and men all included together. There might be two men before the mast—a master, a mate, and a boy. This is sadly too little. A ship of this sort shouldn’t, to my mind, have less than seven hands: that is the least to be safe. In rough weather, you see, perhaps the ship is letting water: the master takes the ‘hellum,’ one hand, in general, stops on deck to work the pumps, and three goes aloft. Most likely one of the boys has only been to sea one or two voyages; and if there’s six hands to such a ship, two of them is sure to be ‘green-boys,’ just fresh from the shore, and of little or no use to us. We haven’t help enough to get the sail off the yards in time,—there’s no one on deck looking out,—it may be thick weather,—and, of course, it’s properly dangerous. About half the accidents at sea occur from the ships being badly manned. The ships generally, throughout the coal-trade, have one hand in six too little. The colliers, mostly, carry double their registered tonnage. A ship of 250 tons carrying 500, will have ten hands, when she ought to have twelve or thirteen; and out of the ten that she does have, perhaps four of them is boys. All sailors in the coal-trade are paid by the voyage. They vary from 3l. 10s. up to 4l. for able-bodied seamen. The ships from the same port in the north give all alike for a London journey. In the height of summer, the wages is from 3l. 5s. to 3l. 15s.; and in the winter they are 4l. Them’s the highest wages given this winter. The wages are increased in the winter, because the work’s harder and the weather’s colder. Some of the ships lay up, and there’s a greater demand for those that are in the trade. It’s true that the seamen of those that are laying up are out of employ; but I can’t say why it is that the wages don’t come down in consequence. All I know is they go up in the winter. This is sadly too little pay, this 4l. a journey. Probably, in the winter, a man may make only two journeys in four months; and if he’s got a wife and family, his expenses is going on at home all the while. The voyage I consider to last from the time of sailing from the north port, to the time of entering the north port again. The average time of coming from the north port to London is from ten to eleven days. Sometimes the passage has been done in six: but I’m speaking of the average. We are generally about twenty-two days at sea, making the voyage from the north and back. The rest of the time we are discharging cargo, or lying idle in the Pool. On making the port of London, we have to remain in ‘the Section’ till the cargo is sold. ‘The Section’ is between Woolwich and Gravesend. I have remained there as much as five weeks. I have been there, too, only one market-day—that is, three days. It is very seldom this occurs. The average time that we remain in ‘the Section’ is from two to three weeks. The cause of this delay arises from the factors not disposing of the coals, in order to keep up the prices. If a large fleet comes, the factors will not sell immediately, because the prices would go down; so we are kept in ‘the Section,’ for their convenience, without no more wages. When the cargo is sold we drop down into the Pool; and there we remain about two days more than we ought, for want of a meter. We are often kept, also, a day over the day of delivery. This we call a ‘balk day.’ The owners of the ship receive a certain compensation for every one of these balk days. This is expressed in the charter-party, or ship’s contract. The whippers and meters, too, receive a certain sum for these balk days, the same as if they were working; but the seamen of the colliers are the only parties who receive nothing. The delay arises entirely through the merchant, and he ought to pay us for it. The coal-trade is the only trade that pays by the voyage; all others paying by the month: and the seamen feel it as a great grievance, this detention not being paid for. Very often, while I have been laying in ‘the Section,’ because the coalfactor would not sell, other seamen that entered the port of London with me have made another voyage and been back again, whilst I was stopping idle; and been 3l. 10s., or 4l., the better for it. Four or five years since the voyage was 1l. or 2l. better paid for. I have had, myself, as much as 6l. the voyage, and been detained much less. Within the last three years our wages have decreased 30 per cent, whilst the demand for coals and for colliers has increased considerably. I never heard of such a thing as supply and demand; but it does seem to me a very queer thing that, whilst there’s a greater quantity of coals sold, and more colliers employed, we poor seamen should be paid worse. In all the ships that I have been in, I’ve generally been pretty well fed; but I have been aboard some ships, and heard of a great many more, where the food is very bad, and the men are very badly used. On the passage, the general rule is to feed the men upon salt meat. The pork they in general use is Kentucky, Russian, Irish, and, indeed, a mixture of all nations. Any kind of offal goes aboard some ships; but the one I’m on now there’s as good meat as ever went aboard; aye, and plenty of it—no stint.”

A basketman, who was present whilst I was taking the above statement, told me that the foreman of the coalwhippers had more chances of judging of the state of the provisions supplied to the colliers than the men had themselves; for the basketmen delivered many different ships, and it was the general rule for them to get their dinner aboard, among the sailors. The basketman here referred to told me that he had been a butcher, and was consequently well able to judge of the quality of the meat. “I have no hesitation,” said he, “in stating, that one half the meat supplied to the seamen is unfit for human consumption. I speak of the pork in particular. Frequently the men throw it overboard to get it out of the way. Many a time when I’ve been dining with the men I wouldn’t touch it. It fairly and regularly stinks as they takes it out of the coppers.”

I now come to the class called Coalmeters. These, though belonging to the class of “clerks,” rather than labourers, still form so important a link in the chain, that I think it best to give a description of their duty here.

The coalmeters weigh the coals on board ship. They are employed by a committee of coalfactors and coalmerchants—nine factors and nine merchants forming such committee. The committee is elected by the trade. They go out every year, and consequently two new members are elected annually. They have the entire patronage of the meter’s office. No person can be an official coalmeter without being appointed by the coal-committee. There were formerly several bye-meters, chosen by the merchants from among their own men, as they pleased. This practice has been greatly diminished since April last. The office of the coalmeter is to weigh out the ship’s cargo, as a middle-man between the factor and the merchant. The cargo is consigned by the pit-owner or the shipowner to the coalfactor. The number of coalfactors is about twenty-five. These men dispose of all the coals that are sold in London. As soon as the ship arrives at Gravesend, her papers are transmitted to an office appointed for that purpose, and the factor then proceeds to the Coal Exchange to sell them. Here the merchants and the factors assemble three times a-week. The purchasers are divided into large and small buyers. Large buyers consist of the higher class coalmerchants, and they will sometimes buy as many as three or four thousand tons in a-day. The small buyers only purchase by multiples of seven—either fourteen, twenty-one, or twenty-eight tons, as they please. The rule of the market is, that the buyers pay one half of the purchase-money the first market-day after the ship is cleared, and for the remainder a bill at six weeks is given. After the ship is sold she is admitted from the Section into the Pool, and a meter is appointed to her from the coalmeter’s office. This office is maintained by the committee of factors and merchants, and the masters appointed by them are registered there. According as a fresh ship is sold, the next meter in rotation is sent down to her. There are in all 170 official meters, divided into three classes, called respectively “placemen,” “extra men,” and “supernumeraries.” The placeman has the preference of the work. If there is more than the placeman can do the extra man takes it, and if both classes are occupied then the supernumerary steps in. Should the earnings of the latter class not amount to 25s. weekly, that sum is made up to them. Before “breaking bulk,” that is, before beginning to work the cargo of the ship, the City dues must, under a penalty, be paid by the factor. These amount to 1s. 1d. per ton. The 1s. goes to the City, and the 1d. to the Government. Formerly the whole of the dues went to the City, but within a short period the odd 1d. has been claimed by Government. The coal dues form one of the principal revenues of the city. The dues are collected by the clerk of the Coal Exchange. All the harbour dues and light dues are paid by the shipowner. After the City dues have been paid, the meter receives his papers and goes on board to deliver the cargo, and see that each buyer registered on the paper gets his proper complement. The meter’s hours of attendance are from seven to four in winter, and from seven to five in summer. The meter has to wait on board the ship until such time as the purchasers send craft to receive their coals. He then weighs them previously to their delivery into the barge. There are eight weighs to the ton. The rate of payment to the meter is 1½d. per ton, and the merchant is compelled to deliver the cargo at the rate of forty-nine tons per day, making the meter’s wages amount to 6s. 1½d. per day. “If there is a necessity or demand for more coals, we can do double that amount of work. On the shortest day in the year we can do ninety-eight tons.” One whom I saw said, “I myself have done 112 tons to-day. That would make my earnings to-day 15s., but as I did nothing on Saturday, of course that reduces them one half.”

COAL-PORTERS FILLING WAGGONS AT COAL-WHARF.

[From a Sketch.]

Upon an average, a place-meter is employed about five days in the week. An extra meter is employed about four days in the week, and a supernumerary about half his time, but he has always his 25s. weekly secured to him, whether employed or not. Two pounds a-week would be a very fair average for the wages of a place-meter, since the reduction on the 1st of April. Many declare they don’t earn 36s. a-week, but many do more. The extra man gets very nearly the same money as the place-man, under the present arrangement. The supernumerary generally makes his 30s. weekly. As the system at present stands, the earnings of the meters generally are not so much as those of superior mechanics. It is an office requiring interest to obtain it: a man must be of known integrity; thousands and thousands of pounds of property pass through his hands, and he is the man appointed to see justice between factor and merchant. Before the Act directing all coals to be sold by weight, the meter measured them in a vat, holding a quarter of a chaldron. In those days a first-class meter could reckon upon an income of from 400l. to 500l. a-year, and the lowest salary was not under 300l. per annum. The meter’s office was then entirely a city appointment, and none but those of considerable influence could obtain it. This system was altered eighteen years ago, when the meter’s office was placed in the hands of a committee of coalfactors and coalmerchants. Immediately after this time the salaries decreased. The committee first agreed to pay the meters at the rate of 2d. per ton, undertaking that that sum should produce the place-meter an income of 120l. One gentleman assured me that he never exceeded 114l., but then he was one of the juniors. Under the old system the meters were paid at a rate that would have been equivalent to 3d. a ton under the present one. In the year 1831 the salary was reduced to 2d., and on the 1st of April in the present year, the payment has again been cut down to 1½d. per ton. Besides this, the certificate money, which was 2s. per ship, and generally amounted to 30s. per quarter, was entirely disallowed, making the total last reduction of their wages amount to full 30 per cent. No corresponding reduction has taken place in the price of coals to the consumer. At the same time the price of whipping has been reduced 1d. per ton, so that, within the last year, the combined factors and merchants have lowered the price of delivery 1½d. per ton, and they (the merchants and factors) have been the sole gainers thereby. This has been done, too, while the demand for coals has been increasing every year. Now, according to the returns of the clerk of the Coal Exchange, there were 3,418,340 tons of coals delivered in the port of London in the year 1848, and assuming the amount to have remained the same in the present year, it follows that the factors and merchants have gained no less than 21,364l. 12s. 6d. per annum, and that out of the earnings of the meters and the whippers.

The coalwhippers, already described, whip the coals by means of a basket and tackle from the hold to the deck of the ship. The coalmeters weigh the coals when so whipped from the hold, previously to their being delivered into the barge alongside. The “coalbacker” properly carries the coals in sacks upon his back from the barges, when they have reached the premises of the coal-merchants, on to the wharfs.

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I will now proceed to speak of

Coalporters are employed in filling the waggons of the merchants at their respective wharfs, and in conveying and delivering the coal at the residence of the customers. Their distinguishing dress is a fantail hat, and an outer garment—half smock-frock and half jacket—heavy and black with coal-dust: this garment is often left open at the breast, especially, I am told, on a Monday, when the porter generally has a clean shirt to display. The narrative I give, will show how the labour of these men is divided. The men themselves have many terms for the same employment. The man who drives the waggon I heard styled indifferently, the “waggoner,” “carman,” or “shooter.” The man who accompanies him to aid in the delivery of the coals was described to me as the “trimmer,” “trouncer,” or “pull-back.” There are also the “scurfs” and the “sifters,” of whom a description will be given presently. The coalporters form a rude class; not, perhaps, from their manners being ruder than those of other classes of labourers, whose labour cannot be specified under the description of “skilled,” (it is, indeed, but the exertion of animal strength—the work of thew and muscle), but from their being less educated. I was informed that not one man in six—the manager in a very large house in the coal-trade estimated it at but one in eight—could read or write, however imperfectly. As a body, they have no fellowship or “union” among themselves, no general sick fund, no organization in rules for their guidance as an important branch (numerically) of an important traffic; indeed, as it was described to me by one of the class, “no nothing.” The coalporters thus present a striking contrast to the coalwhippers, who, out of means not exceeding those of the porters, have done so much for the sick among them, and for the instruction of their children. The number of men belonging to the Benefit Society of Coalwhippers is 436; and there are about 200 coalwhippers belonging to another society, that was instituted before the new office. There are 200 more in connexion with other offices. There were 130 sick men relieved by the Coalwhippers’ Society last year. There were 14 deaths out of the 436 members. Each sick man receives 10s. a-week, and on death there is a payment of 5l. a man, and 3l. in the case of a wife. The amount of subscription to the fund is 3d. per week under forty years of age, 4d. to fifty, 5d. to sixty, and above that, 6d. On account of the want of any organization among the coalporters, it is not easy to get at their numbers with accuracy. No apprenticeship is necessary for the coalporter, no instruction even; so long as he can handle a shovel, or lift a sack of coals with tolerable celerity, he is perfect in his calling. The concurrent testimony of the best-informed parties, gave me the number of the porters (exclusive of those known as sifters, scurfs, or odd men,) as 1500; that is, 1500 employed thus: in large establishments on “the waterside,” five men are employed as backers and fillers—two to fill the sacks, and three to carry them on their backs from the barge to the waggon, (in smaller establishments there are only two to carry). There are two more then employed to conduct the load of coal to the residence of the purchaser—the waggoner (or carman), and the trimmer (or trouncer). Of these the waggoner is considered the picked man, for he is expected to be able to write his name. Sometimes he can write nothing else, and more frequently not even so much, carrying his name on the customer’s ticket ready written; and he has the care of the horses as driver, and frequently as groom.

At one time, when their earnings were considerable, these coalporters spent large sums in drink. Now their means are limited, and their drunkenness is not in excess. The men, as I have said, are ill-informed. They have all a pre-conceived notion that beer sometimes in large quantities (one porter said he limited himself to a pint an hour, when at work), is necessary to them “for support.” Even if facts were brought conclusively to bear upon the subject to prove that so much beer, or any allowance of beer, was injurious, it would, I think, be difficult to convince the porters, for an ignorant man will not part with a pre-conceived notion. I heard from one man, more intelligent than his fellows, that a temperance lecturer once went among a body of the coalporters and talked about “alcohol” and “fermentation,” and the like, until he was pronounced either mad or a Frenchman.

The question arises, Why is this ignorance allowed to continue, as a reproach to the men, to their employers, and to the community? Of the kindness of masters to the men, of discouragement of drunkenness, of persuasions to the men to care for the education of their children, I had the gratification of hearing frequently. But of any attempt to establish schools for the general instruction of the coalporters’ children, of any talk of almshouses for the reception of the worn-out labourer, of any other provision for his old age, which is always premature through hard work,—of any movement for the amelioration of this class, I did not hear. Rude as these porters may be, machines as they may be accounted, they are the means of wealth to their employers, and deserve at least some care and regard on their part.

The way in which the barges are unladen to fill the waggons is the same in the rivers as in the canals. Two men standing in the barge fill the sacks, and three (or two) carry them along planks, if the barge be not moored close ashore to the waggon, which is placed as near the water as possible. In the canals, this work is carried on most regularly, as the water is not influenced by the tide, and the work can go on all day long. I will describe, therefore, what I saw in the City Basin, Regent’s Canal. This canal has been opened about twenty years. It commences at the Grand Junction at Paddington, and falls into the Thames above the Limehouse Dock. Its course is circuitous, and in it are two tunnels—one at Islington, three-quarters of a mile long; the other at the Harrow Road a quarter of a mile long. If a merchant in the Regent’s Canal has purchased the cargo of a collier, such cargo is whipped into the barge. For the conducting of this laden barge to the Limehouse Basin of the canal, the merchant has to employ licensed lightermen, members of the Waterman’s Company, as none else are privileged to work on the river. The canal attained, the barge is taken into charge by two men, who, not being regular “watermen,” confine their labours to the canal. These men (a steerer and a driver) convey the barge,—suppose to the City Basin, Islington, which, as it is about midway, gives a criterion as to the charge and the time when other distances are concerned. They go back with an empty barge. Each of these bargemen has 2s. a barge for conveyance to the City Basin. The conveyance of the loaded barge occupies three hours, sixty-four tons of coal being an average cargo. Two barges a-day, in fine weather, can be thus conducted, giving a weekly earning to each man in full work of 24s. This is subject to casualties and deductions, but it is not my present intention to give the condition of these bargemen. I reserve this for a future and more fitting occasion. In frosty weather, when the ice has caused many delays, as much as 6s. a-barge per man has been paid; and, I was told, hard-earned money, too. A barge at such times has not been got into the City Basin in less than forty-eight hours. The crowded state of the canal at the wharfs at this time of the year, gives it the appearance of a crowded thoroughfare, there being but just room for one vessel to get along.

From the statement with which I was favoured by a house carrying on a very extensive business, it appears that the average earnings of the men in their employ was, the year through, upwards of 28s. I give the payments of twelve men regularly employed as the criterion of their earnings, on the best paid description of coalporters’ labour, for four weeks at the busiest time:—

December	22	£21	5	5
„	15	21	17	3
„	8	22	10	1
November	17	28	8	0

This gives an average of more than 1l. 19s. per man a-week for this period; but the slackness of trade in the summer, when coals are in smaller demand, reduces the average to the amount I have stated. In the two weeks omitted in the above statement, viz. those ending December 1st and November 24th, fourteen men had to be employed, on account of the briskness of trade. Their joint earnings were 39l. 12s. 5d. one week, and 33l. 6s. 7d. the other. By this firm each waggoner is paid 1l. a-week, and 6s. extra if he “do” 100 tons; that is, 6s. between him and the trimmer. For every ton above 100 carried out by their waggoner and trimmer, 1d. extra is paid, and sometimes 130 are carried out, but only at a busy time; 142 have been carried out, but that only was remembered as the greatest amount at the wharf in question. For each waggon sent out, the waggoner and the trimmer together receive 4d. for “beer money” from their employers. They frequently receive money (if not drink) from the customers, and so the average of 28s. and upwards is made up. I saw two waggoners fully employed, and they fully corroborated this statement. Such payment, however, is not the rule. Many give the waggoner 21s. a-week, and employ him in doing whatever work may be required. A waggoner at what he called “poor work,” three or four days a-week, told me he earned about 13s. on the average.

The scurfs are looked upon as, in many respects, the refuse of the trade. They are the men always hanging about the wharfs, waiting for any “odd job.” They are generally coalporters who cannot be trusted with full and regular work, who were described to me as “tonguey, or drunken,” anxious to get a job just to supply any pressing need, either for drink or meat, and careless of other consequences. Among them, however, are coalporters seeking employment, some with good characters. These scurfs, with the sifters, number, I understand, more than 500; thus altogether making, with the coalbackers and other classes of coalporters, a body of more than 2000.

I now come to the following statement, made by a gentleman who for more than thirty years has been familiar with all matters connected with the coal-merchants’ trade. “I cannot say,” he began, “that the condition of the coalporter (not referring to his earnings, but to his moral and intellectual improvement) is much amended now, for he is about the same sort of man that he was thirty years ago. There may be, and I have no doubt is, a greater degree of sobriety, but I fear chiefly on account of the men’s earnings being now smaller, and their having less means at their command. Thirty-five years ago, before the general peace, labourers were scarce, and the coalporters then had full and ready employment, earning from 2l. to 3l. a-week. I have heard a coalporter say that one week he earned 5l.; indeed, I have heard several say so. After the peace, the supply of labour for the coal-trade greatly increased, and the coalporters’ earnings fell gradually. The men employed in a good establishment thirty years ago, judging from the payments in our own establishment as a fair criterion, were in the receipt of nearly 3l. a-week on the average. At that time coal was delivered by the chaldron. A chaldron was composed of 12 sacks containing 36 bushels, and weighing about 25 cwt. (a ton and a-quarter). For the loading of the waggons a gang of four men, called ‘fillers,’ was, and is, employed. They were paid 1s. 4d. per chaldron; that is, 4d. per man. This was for measuring the coal, putting it into sacks, and putting the sacks into the waggon. The men in this gang had nothing to do with the conveyance of the coal to the customers. For that purpose two other men were employed; a ‘waggoner,’ and a man known as a ‘trimmer,’ or ‘trouncer,’ who accompanied the waggoner, and aided him in carrying the sacks from the waggon to the customers’ coal-cellar, and in arranging the coal when delivered, so as properly to assort the small with the large, or indeed making any arrangement with them required by the purchaser. The waggoner and the trimmer were paid 1s. 3d. each per chaldron for delivery, but when the coal had to be carried up or down-stairs any distance, their charge was an extra shilling—2s. 3d. Many of the men have at that time, when work was brisk, filled and delivered fifteen chaldrons day by day, provided the distance for delivery was not very far. Drink was sometimes given by the customers to the waggoner and trimmer who had charge of the coal sent to their houses—perhaps generally given; and I believe it was always asked for, unless it happened to be given without asking. At that time I did not know one teetotaler; I do not know one personally among those parties now. Some took the pledge, but I believe none kept it. In this establishment we discourage drunkenness all that we possibly can. In 1832, wages having varied from the time of the peace until then, a great change took place. Previous to that time a reduction of 4d. per ton had been made in the payment of the men who filled the waggons (the fillers), but not in that of the waggoner or the trimmer. The change I allude to was that established by Act of Parliament, providing for the sale of all coal by the merchant being by weight instead of by measure. This change, it was believed, would benefit the public, by ensuring them the full quantity for which they bargained. I think it has benefited them. Coal was, under the former system, measured by the bushel, and there were frequently objections as to the way in which the bushel was filled. Some dealers were accused of packing the measure, so as to block it up with large pieces of coal, preventing the full space being filled with the coal. The then Act provided that the bushel measure should be heaped up with the coal so as to form a cone six inches above the rim of the measure. When the new Act came into operation the coalporters were paid 10d. a-ton among the gang of four fillers, and the same to the waggoner and trimmer. Before two years this became reduced generally to 9d. The gang could load twenty-five tons a-day without extra toil; forty tons, and perhaps more, have been loaded by a gang: but such labour continued would exhaust strong men. With extra work there was always extra drink, for the men fancy that their work requires beer ‘for support.’ My opinion is that a moderate allowance of good malt liquor, say three pints a-day when work is going on all day, is of advantage to a coalporter. In the winter they fancy it necessary to drink gin to warm them. At one time all the men drank more than now. I estimate the average earnings of a coalporter fully employed now at 1l. a-week. There are far more employed at present than when I first knew the trade, and the trade itself has been greatly extended by the new wharfs on the Regent’s Canal, and up and down the river.”

I had heard from so many quarters that “beer” was a necessity of the coal-labourers’ work, that finding the coalwhippers the most intelligent of the whole class, I thought it best to call the men together, and to take their opinion generally on the subject. Accordingly I returned to the basketmen’s waiting-room at the coalwhippers’ office, and, as before, it was soon crowded. There were eighty present. Wishing to know whether the coalbacker’s statement already given, that the drinking of beer was a necessity of hard labour, was a correct one, I put the question to the men there assembled: “Is the drinking of fermented liquors necessary for performing hard work? How many present believe that you can work without beer?” Those who were of opinion that it was necessary for the performance of their labour, were requested to hold up their hands, and four out of the eighty did so.

A basketman who had been working at the business for four years, and for two of those years had been a whipper, and so doing the heaviest labour, said that in the course of the day he had been one of a gang who had delivered as many as 189 tons. For this he had required no drink at all; cocoa was all he had taken. Three men in the room had likewise done without beer at the heaviest work. One was a coalwhipper, and had abstained for six years. Some difference of opinion seemed to exist as to the number in the trade that worked without beer. Some said 250, others not 150. One man stated that it was impossible to do without malt liquor. “One shilling a day properly spent in drink would prolong life full ten years,” he said. This was received with applause. Many present declared that they had tried to do without beer, and had injured themselves greatly by the attempt. Out of the eighty present, fourteen had tried teetotalism, and had thrown it up after a time on account of its injuring their health. One man, on the other hand, said he had given the total-abstinence principle a fair trial for seven months, and had never found himself in such good health before. Another man stated, that to do a day’s work of ninety-eight turns, three pints of beer were requisite. All but three believed this. The three pints were declared to be requisite in winter time, and four pints, or two pots, were considered to be not too much in a hot summer’s day. Before the present office was instituted, each man, they told me, drank half-a-pint of gin and six pots of beer daily. That was the average—many drank more. Then they could not do their work so well; they were weaker from not having so much food. The money went for drink instead of meat. They were always quarrelling on board a ship. Drunken men could never agree. “A portion of beer is good, but too much is worse than none at all.” This was the unanimous declaration.

Since this meeting I have been at considerable pains to collect a large amount of evidence in connexion with this most important question. The opinion of the most intelligent of the class seems to be, that no kind of fermented drink is necessary for the performance of the hardest labour; but I have sought for and obtained the sentiments of all classes, temperate and intemperate, with the view of fairly discussing the subject. These statements I must reserve till my next letter. At present I shall conclude with the following story of the sufferings of the wife of one of the intemperate class:—

“I have been married nineteen or twenty years. I was married at Penton, in Oxfordshire. We came to London fifteen years ago. My husband first worked as a sawyer. For eleven years he was in the coal-trade. He was in all sorts of work, and for the last six months he was a ‘scurf.’ What he earned all the time I never knew. He gave me what he liked, sometimes nothing at all. In May last he only gave me 2s. 8d. for the whole month, for myself and two children. I buried four children. I can’t tell how we lived then. I can’t express what we’ve suffered, all through drink. He gave me twenty years of misery through drink. [This was repeated four or five times.] Some days that May we had neither bit nor sup; the water was too bad to drink cold, and I had to live on water put through a few leaves in the teapot—old leaves. Poor people, you know, sir, helps poor people; and but for the poor neighbours we might have been found dead some day. He cared nothing. Many a time I have gone without bread to give it to the children. Was he ever kind to them, do you say, sir? No; they trembled when they heard his step; they were afraid of their very lives, he knocked them about so; drink made him a savage; drink took the father out of him.” This was said with a flush and a rapid tone, in strong contrast with the poor woman’s generally subdued demeanour. She resumed:—“Twenty miserable years through drink! I’ve often gone to bring him from the public-house, but he seldom would come. He would abuse me, and would drink more because I’d gone for him. I’ve often whispered to him that his children was starving: but I durstn’t say that aloud when his mates was by. We seldom had a fire. He often beat me. I’ve 9s. in pawn now. Since we came to London I’ve lost 20l. in the pawnshop.”

This man had died a fortnight before, having ruptured a blood-vessel. He lay ill six days. The parish doctor attended him. His comrades “gathered” for his burial, but the widow had still some funeral expenses to pay by instalments. The room she and the children occupied was the same as in the husband’s lifetime. There was about the room a cold damp smell, arising from bad ventilation and the chilliness of the weather. Two wretched beds almost filled the place. No article was worth a penny, nor could a penny have been obtained at a sale or a pawnshop. The woman was cleanly clad, but looked sadly pinched, miserable, and feeble. She earns a little as a washerwoman, and did earn it while her husband lived. She bears an excellent character. Her repetition of the words, “twenty years of misery through drink,” was very pitiful. I refrained from a prolonged questioning, as it seemed to excite her in her weak state.

BALLAST-MEN. — The Ballast-Getters. — The Ballast-Lightermen. — The Ballast-Heavers. — NUMBER OF CHARGES OF DRUNKENNESS EACH YEAR IN THE YEARS 1831, 1832, 1833. — Meeting of the Ballast-Heavers’ Wives.

Having finished with the different classes of coal-labourers in London—the whippers, backers, pull-backs, trimmers, and waggoners—I purpose now dealing with the ballast-men, including the ballast-getters, the ballast-lightermen, and the ballast-heavers of the metropolis. My reason for passing from the coal to the ballast-labourers is, because the latter class of the work-people are suffering under the same iniquitous and pernicious system of employment as that from which the coal-labourers have recently been emancipated, and the transition will serve to show not only the present condition of the one class of men, but the past state of the other.

After treating of the ballast-labourers, I purpose inquiring into the condition and income of the stevedores, or men engaged in the stowing or unstowing of vessels; and of the lumpers and riggers, or those engaged in the rigging and unrigging of them. It is then my intention to pass to the corn-labourers, such as the corn-porters, corn-runners, and turners, touching incidentally upon the corn-meters. After this, I mean to devote my attention to the timber-labourers engaged at the different timber-docks—as, for instance, the Commercial, the Grand Surrey, and the East Country Docks. Then, in due course, I shall come to the wharf-labourers and porters, or men engaged at the different wharfs in London; thence I shall digress to the bargemen and lightermen, or men engaged in the transit of the different cargoes from the ships to their several points of destination up or down the river; and finally, I shall treat of the watermen, the steamboat-men, and pier-men, or those engaged in the transit of passengers along the Thames. These, with the dock-labourers, of whom I have before treated, will, I believe, exhaust the subject of the long-shore labourers; and the whole will, I trust, form, when completed, such a body of facts and information, in connexion with this particular branch of labour, as has never before been collected. I am happy to say, that, with some few exceptions, I have received from the different official gentlemen not only every courtesy and consideration, but all the assistance and co-operation that it lay in their power to afford me. Every class seems to look upon the present inquiry as an important undertaking, and all, save the Clerk of the Coal Exchange and the Deputy-Superintendent of the London Docks, have shown themselves not only willing, but anxious, to lend a hand towards expediting the result.

Before quitting the subject of the coal-market, let me endeavour to arrive at an estimate as to the amount of wealth annually brought into the port of London by means of the colliers, and to set forth, as far as possible, the proportion in which it is distributed. I have already given some statistics, which, notwithstanding the objections of a coal-merchant, who, in a letter to a journal, stated that I had reckoned the number of ships at twice the real quantity, were obtained from such sources, and, I may add, with so much care and caution, as to render them the most accurate information capable of being procured at present on the subject. The statistics of the number of tons of coals brought into the port of London in the year 1848, the number of vessels employed, of the voyages made by those vessels collectively, and of the seamen engaged in the traffic, were furnished by the Clerk of the Coal Exchange at the time of the opening of the new building. Had the coal-merchant, therefore, made it his duty to devote the same time and care to the investigation of the truth of my statements that I have to the collection of them, he would not only have avoided committing the very errors he condemns, but would have displayed a more comprehensive knowledge of his business.

In 1848 there were imported into the London coal market 3,418,340 tons of coal. These were sold to the public at an average rate all the year round of 22s. 6d. a ton. Hence the sum expended in the metropolis for coal in that year was 3,845,632l. 10s.

There are 21,600 seamen engaged in the coal trade, and getting on an average 3l. 10s. per man per voyage. Each of these men makes between 4 and 5 voyages in the course of the year. Hence the average earnings of each man per year will be 15l. 18s., exclusive of his keep; calculating that at 5s. per week, or 13l. per year, we have 28l. 18s. for the expense of each of the seamen employed. Hence, as there are 21,600 sailors in the coal trade, the total yearly cost would be	£624,240 0 0
There are 170 coal-meters, earning, on an average, 2l. per week, or 104l. per year each man. This would make the total sum paid in the year to the coal-meters	17,680 0 0
There are 2000 coal-whippers, earning 15s. 1½d. each per week, or 39l. 6s. 6d. per man. Hence the total sum paid in the course of last year to the coal-whippers was	78,650 0 0
There are 3000 coal-porters earning, on an average, 1l. per week, or 52l. per year per man, so that they receive annually	156,000 0 0
Hence the total amount paid per year to the working-men engaged in bringing and delivering coals in the London market is	£876,570 0 0

The area of all the coal-fields of Great Britain has been roughly estimated at 9000 square miles. The produce is supposed to be about 32,000,000 tons annually, of which 10,000,000 tons are consumed in the iron-works, 8,500,000 tons are shipped coastwise, 2,500,000 tons are exported to foreign countries, and 11,000,000 tons distributed inland for miscellaneous purposes. Near upon 4,000,000 tons were brought to London by ships and otherwise in the year 1848, and it is computed that about one-eighth part of this, or 500,000 tons, were consumed by the gas-works.

The price of coals as quoted in the London market is the price up to the time when the coals are whipped from the ships to the merchants’ barges. It includes, 1st. the value of the coals; 2d. the expense of transit from the pit to the ship; 3d. the freight of the ship to London; 4th. the Thames’ dues; and 5th. the whipping. The difference between the market price and that paid by the consumer is made up of the expense incurred by the coal-merchant for barges, wharfs, waggons, horses, wages, coal-porters, &c., to his profit and risk. In 1836 the expenses incurred by the merchant from the time he bought a ship-load of coals to the deposition of them in the cellars of his customers amounted, on an average, it was said, to 7s. a ton. These expenses comprise commission, lighterage, porterage, cartage, shooting, metage, market-dues, land-metage, and other items. At the present time the expenses must be considerably lower, the wages of the labourers and the meters having been lowered full 50 per cent, though the demand for and consumption of coal has increased at nearly the same rate; indeed the law of the coal-market appears to be, that in proportion as the demand for the article rises, so do the wages of the men engaged in the supply of it fall.

As the ballast-heavers are under the thraldom of the same demoralising and oppressive system as that which the coal-whippers recently suffered under, it may be as well, before going further, to lay before the reader the following concise account of the terms on which the latter were engaged before the Coal-whippers’ Office was established.

Until the last few years the coal-whippers suffered themselves to be duped in an extraordinary way by publicans and petty shopkeepers on shore. The custom was, for the captain of a coal-ship, when he required a cargo to be whipped, to apply to one of these publicans for a gang; and a gang was accordingly sent from the public-house. There was no professed or pre-arranged deduction from the price paid for the work; the captain paid the publican, and the publican paid the coal-whippers; but the middleman had his profit another way. The coal-whipper was expected to come to the public-house in the morning; to drink while waiting for work, to take drink with him to the ship, to drink again when the day’s work was over, and to linger about and in the public-house until almost bed-time before his day’s wages were paid. The consequence was, that an enormous ratio of his earnings went every week to the publican. The publicans were wont to divide their dependants into two classes—the constant men and the stragglers, of whom the former were first served whenever a cargo was to be whipped; in return for this they were expected to spend almost the whole of their spare time in the public-house, and even to take up their lodgings there.

The captains preferred applying to the publicans to engaging the men themselves, because it saved them trouble; and because (as was pretty well understood) the publicans curried favour with them by indirect means; grocers and small shopkeepers did the same, and the coal-whippers had then to buy bad and dear groceries instead of bad and dear beer and gin. The Legislature tried by various means to protect the coal-whippers, but the publicans contrived means to evade the law. At length, in 1843, an Act was passed, which has placed the coal-whippers in a far more advantageous position.

The transition from coal-labour to ballast-labour is gradual and easy, and would be even if the labourers were not kindred in suffering.

The coal-ships, when discharged by the whippers, must get back to the north; and as there are not cargoes enough from London to freight them, they must take in ballast to make the ships heavy enough to sail in safety. This ballast is chiefly ballast or sand, dredged up from the bed of the Thames at and near Woolwich Reach. The Trinity House takes upon itself this duty. The captain, when he requires to sail, applies to the Ballast Office, and the required weight of ballast is sent to the ship in lighters belonging to the Trinity House, the captain paying so much a ton for it. About 80 tons on an average are required for each vessel, and the quantity thus supplied by the Trinity House is about 10,000 tons per week. Some of the ships are ballasted with chalk taken from Purfleet; all ballast taken from higher up the river than that point must be supplied by the Trinity House. When the ship reaches the Tyne, the ballast is of no further use, but it must not be emptied into that river; it has, therefore, to be deposited on the banks, where huge mounds are now collected two or three hundred feet high.

New places on the banks of the river have to be discovered for this deposit as the ballast mounds keep increasing, for it must be recollected that the vessels leave these ports—no matter for what destination—with coal, and may return in ballast. Indeed a railway has been formed from the vicinity of South Shields to a waste place on the sea-shore, hard by the mouth of the Tyne, where the ballast may be conveyed at small cost, its further accumulation on the river bank being found an incumbrance. “It is really something more than a metaphor,” it has been said, “to designate this a transfer of the bed of the Thames to the banks of the Tyne.” We may add as another characteristic, that some of the older ballast mounds are overgrown with herbage. As the vessels from foreign ports returning to the coal-ports in ballast, have not unfrequently to take soil on board for ballast, in which roots and seeds are contained, some of there struggle into vegetation, so that Italian flowers not unfrequently attempt to bloom in Durham, Yorkshire, or Northumberland, while some have survived the climate and have spread around; and thus it is that botanists trace the history of plants which are called indigenous to the ballast-hills.

Before treating of the ballast labourers themselves I shall give a brief history of the ballast laws.

Ships are technically said to be in ballast when they sail without a cargo, having on board only the stores and other articles requisite for the use of the vessel and crew, as well as of any passengers who may be proceeding with her upon the voyage. In favour of vessels thus circumstanced it is usual to dispense with many formalities at the custom-houses of the ports, and to remit the payment of the dues and charges levied upon ships having cargoes on board. A foreign vessel proceeding from a British port may take chalk on board as ballast. Regulations have at various times been made in different ports and countries, determining the modes in which ships may be supplied with ballast, and in what manner they may discharge the same, such regulations being necessary to prevent injury to harbours. Charles I. published a proclamation in 1636, ordering that none shall buy any ballast out of the river Thames but a person appointed by him for that purpose. And this appointment was sold for the king’s profit. Since then the soil of the river Thames has been vested in the corporation of the Trinity House, and a fine of 10l. may be recovered for every ton of ballast taken out of the river without the authority of the corporation. Ships may take on board land-ballast from any quarries or pits east of Woolwich by paying 1d. per ton to the Trinity House. For river-ballast the corporation are authorised by Act of Parliament to make other charges. The receipts of the Trinity House from this source were 33,591l. in the year 1840, and their expenses were 31,622l., leaving a clear profit of 1969l. The ballast of all ships or vessels coming into the Thames must be unladen into a lighter, and if any ballast be thrown into the river the master of the vessel whence it is thrown is liable to a fine of 20l. Some such regulation is usually enforced at every port.

Before proceeding further with my present subject, it is proper that I should express my acknowledgments of the ready courtesy with which the official information necessary for the full elucidation of my subject was supplied to me by the Secretary of the principal Ballast Office at Trinity House, Tower Hill. I have always observed, that when the heads of a department willingly supply information to go before the public, I find in the further course of my investigations that under such departments the claims of the labourer are not only acknowledged but practically allowed. On the other hand, if official gentlemen neglect (which is to refuse) to supply the returns and other information, it is because the inquiry is unpalatable to them, as the public may find that in their departments the fair claims of the labourers are not allowed. Were the poor ballast-heavers taken under the protection of the corporation of the Trinity House (something in the same way that Parliament has placed the coal-whippers under the guardianship of a board of commissioners) the good done would be great indeed, and the injury would be none: for it cannot be called an injury to prevent a publican forcing a man to buy and swallow bad drink.

By charter of Queen Elizabeth in the 36th year of her reign, the lastage and ballastage, and office of lastage and ballastage, of all ships and other vessels betwixt the bridge of the city of London and the main sea, I am informed by the Secretary of the Trinity Company, was granted to the Master Wardens and Assistants of the Trinity House of Deptford Strond. This was renewed, and the gravel, sand, and soil of the river Thames granted to the said master wardens, &c. for the ballasting of ships and vessels in the 15th year of Charles II., and again in the 17th year of the reign of that monarch. This last-named charter remains in force, and has been confirmed by Acts of Parliament at different times; by which Acts also various regulations in relation to the conduct of the ballast service, the control of the persons employed therein, and the prices of the ballast supplied, have been established. The Act now in force is the 6th and 7th Vict. cap. 57.

The number of men employed in lighters as ballast-getters, or in barges conveying it from the dredgers, is 245, who are paid by the ton raised.

The number of vessels entered for ballast in the year 1848 was:

Colliers	6,480
British merchant vessels	3,690
Aliens	1,054
Total vessels	11,224

The total quantity of ballast supplied to shipping in the year 1848 was 615,619 tons, or thereabouts; such ballast being gravel raised from the bed of the river Thames and delivered alongside of vessels, either lying in the different docks or being afloat in the stream between London-bridge and Woolwich.

The number of vessels employed in this service is 69, viz:—

		Men.
3	steam dredging-vessels, having 8 men in each	24
43	lighters, having 4 men in each	172
9	lighters, having 5 men in each	45
14	barges, having 2 men in each	28
69	Total	269

The ballast is delivered into the vessels from the lighters and barges by men called ballast-heavers, who are employed by the vessel, and are not in the service of the Trinity House.

I now come to the nature of the ballast labour itself. This is divisible into three classes: that performed by the ballast-getters, or those who are engaged in raising it from the bed of the Thames; by the ballast-lighters, or those who are engaged in carrying it from the getters to the ships requiring it; and by the ballast-heavers, or those who are engaged in putting it on board of such ships. The first and second of these classes have, according to their own account, “nothing to complain of,” being employed by gentlemen who, judging by the wanton neglect of labouring men by their masters, so general in London, certainly exhibit a most extraordinary consideration and regard for their work-people; and the change from the indifference and callousness of the coal-merchants to the kindness of the corporation of the Trinity House is most gratifying. The ballast-heavers constitute an entirely different class. They have every one, to a man, deep and atrocious wrongs to complain of, such as I am sure are unknown, and which, when once made public, will at once demand some remedy.

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I must, however, first deal with

Of these there are two sub-classes, viz. those engaged in obtaining the ballast by steam power, and those who still procure it as of old by muscular power.

Of seven dredging-engines employed in the collecting of ballast from the bed of the Thames there are three, the Hercules, the Goliath, and the Samson. These are now stationed respectively in Barking Reach, Half Reach near Dagenham, and the bottom of Half-way Reach off Rainham. Most persons who have proceeded up or down the Thames will have perceived black unshapely masses, with no visible indications that they may be classed with steam-vessels except a chimney and smoke. These are the dredging-vessels; they are of about 200 tons burden. The engines of the Hercules and the Samson are of 20-horse power,—those of the Goliath are 25. When the process of dredging is carried on, the use of the dredging-vessel is obvious to any spectator; but I believe that most persons imagine the object to be merely to deepen the river by removing inequalities in its bed, and so to render its navigation easier by equalizing its depth, and in some degrees checking the power of cross-currents. Few are aware that an ulterior object is gained. I visited one of these steam-dredgers, and was very courteously shown over it. The first feeling was an impression of the order, regularity, and trimness that prevailed. In the engineers’ department, too, there was an aspect, as well as a feeling, of extreme snugness, the more perceptible both to the eye and the body from its contrast with the intense cold on the muddy river outside, then running down in very strong ebb. In the engineers’ department there was more than cleanliness; there was a brightness about the brass-handles attached to the machinery, and, indeed, about every portion of the apparatus at all susceptible of brightness, which indicated a constant and systematic attention by well-skilled hands. Each dredger carries eight men, the master (called the captain, commonly enough, on the river), two engineers, an engineer’s assistant, two legsmen (who attend to the ladders), and three men for general purposes. They are all called engine-men. The master of the dredger I visited had the weather-beaten look of the experienced seaman, and the quiet way of talking of past voyages which is found generally in men who have really served, whether in the merchant service or royal navy. He resided on board the dredger with his wife and family, the principal cabin being a very comfortable parlour. All the men live on board, having their turns for visit to the shore from Saturday morning, noon, or evening (as their business permits), to Monday morning. Their sleeping-places are admirable for cleanliness. All the dredgers are under the control of the corporation of the Trinity House. They are, as it was worded to me, as strong as wood and iron can make them. But for secure anchorage these dredgers would soon go adrift. Colliers beating up or down occasionally run against the dredgers: this happens mostly in light winds, when the masters of these colliers are afraid to let go their anchors. The machinery consists of a steam-engine and spur-gear for directing the buckets. The application of the steam-power I need not minutely describe, as it does not differ from other applications where motion has to be communicated. It is connected with strong iron beams, having cogged and connected wheels, which when put into operation give upward and downward motion to the buckets. These buckets are placed on ladders as they are called, one on each side the vessel. These ladders (or shafts) consist of three heavy beams of wood, firmly bolted together and fitted with friction-wheels. To each ladder 29 buckets are attached, each bucket holding 2½ cwt. of gravel. Each bucket is attached by joints to the next, and a series of holes permits the water drawn up with the deposit to ooze out. When the bucket touches the bottom of the river it dips, as it is called. A rotary motion being communicated, the construction ensures the buckets being brought up flat on the ladder until a due height is attained, when the rotary (or circular) motion again comes into play, and the contents of the bucket are emptied into a lighter moored alongside, and the empty bucket is driven down to be refilled. The contents so drawn up are disposed of for ballast, which is the ulterior purpose I have alluded to. Upon an average the buckets revolve once in two minutes. That time, however, varies, from the nature of the bed of the river. The Goliath and the Samson being fitted up with marine engines drive the fastest. The three vessels have for the last year worked within a circle of a mile. The quantity of ballast raised depends upon the demand, as well as upon the character of the deposit at the bottom of the river. Between 900 and 1000 tons have been raised in 7½ hours, sometimes in a like period less than 300 tons have been raised. The dredger I was on board of has taken in a year from 180,000 to 190,000 tons. A stratum of mud 2½ feet had been raised, then 3 feet of gravel, and a chalk bottom was anticipated. In some places 15 feet have been so cleared away to a chalk bottom. In others 15 feet have been so worked off, and no bottom but gravel reached. The gravel lies in shoals. Sometimes the dredgers come to hard conglomerate gravel, as compact as a rock. No fossils have been found. In a few places a clay bottom has been met with. The men in the dredgers are paid according to the number of tons raised, the proceeds being duly apportioned. They work as frequently by night as by day, their labour depending upon the time when an order for a supply of ballast is received. Each lighter holds 60 tons of ballast. The dredgers above bridge are the property of individuals working with the concurrence of the civic corporation of London. Those below bridge are, as I have said, under the control of the corporation of the Trinity House. The Hercules was the first Trinity House dredger worked by steam. Private individuals, however, employed steam sooner than the Trinity House authorities to draw up materials to mix with lime for building purposes. The first Trinity House steam-dredger was started in 1827.

I had some conversation with a man employed on one of the steam-dredgers. He described the process carried on there as I have given it, estimating the tons of ballast raised at about 4000 a-week. He expressed a sense of his good fortune in having the employment he had; he was well used, and wouldn’t like to change. He declined stating his earnings (otherwise than that he had his fair share) until he saw his master, and of course I did not press him further on the subject.

The ballast-getters are men employed in raising ballast from the bed of the river by bodily labour. The apparatus by which this is effected consists of a long staff or pole, about thirty-five feet in length. At the end of this is an iron “spoon” or ring, underneath which is a leathern bag holding about 20 cwt. The ballast is raised on board the working-lighters by means of this spoon. The working-lighters carry six hands: that is, a staffsman whose duty it is to attend to the staff; a bagman, who empties the bag; a chainsman, who hauls at the chain; a heelsman, who lets go the pall of the winch; and two trimmers, who trim the ballast in the lighter as fast as it comes in. Previous to the men getting at work, the staffsman takes hold of the spoon to feel whereabout the ballast-bed lies. When this is found, he puts down his “sets,” as it is termed,—that is to say, he drives the iron-tipped spars that he has with him in the lighter into the ground, so as to steady the craft. This done, the staffsman seizes hold of the middle of the staff, while the bargeman takes the bag and the chainsman the chain, which is fastened to the iron ring or spoon; the staff is thus thrown overboard into the water, about midway of the lighter, and the tide carries the spoon down towards the stern. The staffsman then fastens the staff to the lighter by means of the gaff-string or rope attached to the side of the vessel. At the same time the men go forward to heave at the winch, round the roll of which the chain attached to the spoon itself is wound. All the men, with the exception of the staffsman, then heave away, and so drag the spoon along the bed of the river. When the staffsman feels that the bag is full, he leaves go of the gaff-string and goes forward to heave with the men as well. Immediately the gaff-string is undone the top part of the staff falls back on an oar that projects from the after-part of the vessel, and the bag is then raised by means of the winch and chain to the level of the gunwale of the craft; then the bagsman hauls it in and empties it into the lighter, while the two trimmers spread the ballast discharged. The spoon can only be worked when the tide is nearly down, because the water would be too deep for the set to bring the craft steady. To hoist the 20 cwt. of ballast in the bag will require the whole force of the six men; and none but the very strongest are of use. The ballast-getters are all very powerful men; they are mostly very tall, big-boned, and muscular. Many of them are upwards of six feet high, and have backs two feet broad. “I lifted seven half-hundredweights with one of my hands,” said one whom I saw. He was a man of thirty-nine years of age, and stood half an inch over six feet, while another was six feet two inches. They were indeed extraordinarily fine specimens of the English labourer, making our boasted Life-guardsman appear almost weak and effeminate in comparison with them. Before the steam dredging-engines were introduced, I am informed the ballast-getters were even bigger and heavier men than they are now. The ballast-getters seldom or never fish up anything besides ballast. Four or five years back they were lucky enough to haul up a box of silver plate; but they consider a bit of old iron or a bit of copper very good luck now. The six men generally raise sixty tons eighteen feet high in the course of the tide, which is at the rate of 22,400lbs. each man in three hours: this makes the quantity raised per hour by each man upwards of 7400 lbs. The price paid is 8d. per ton, or 2l. for sixty tons; this is shared equally among five of the men, who receive 8s. a-piece as their proportion, and out of this they pay 3s. 6d. a tide to the stern-trimmer, whom they employ—the Trinity Company allowing only five men and the ballast-getters engaging the sixth man themselves. Upon an average the ballast-getters do about three loads in the week throughout the year,—this, deducting the money paid to the sixth man, makes the earnings of each ballast-getter come to about 22s. throughout the year. The staffsman is allowed 20l. a-year to keep the craft in gear. The ballast-getters usually work above the dredging-engines, mostly about Woolwich; there the cleanest ballast is to be got. The Trinity Company they speak most highly of; indeed the corporation are universally spoken of as excellent masters: the men say they have nothing to complain of. They get their money on every Friday night, and have no call to spend a farthing of their earnings otherwise than as they please. They only wish, they add, that the ballast-heavers were as well off. “It would be a good job if they was, poor men,” say one and all.

The second class of ballast-labourers are

These are men engaged by the Trinity Company to carry the ballast in the company’s barges and lighters from the steam dredging-engines to the ship’s side. The corporation has fifty-two lighters and fourteen barges, all sixty-ton craft. Each lighter carries four men, and there are two men in each barge; so that altogether 108 lightermen and 28 bargemen are employed in bringing the ballast from the engines. These men are not required to have a license from the Waterman’s Company, like other lightermen and bargemen on the Thames, and that is one of the reasons for my dealing with them at present. They form a class of labourers by themselves, and I treat of them here because it appears the fittest place for a statement of their condition and earnings. Besides the lightermen and bargemen engaged in carrying the ballast from the steam dredging-machines, there are others employed on board what are called the working-lighters; these are vessels in which ballast is got up from the bed of the river by muscular labour. There are ten of these working-lighters, and six men engaged in each, or in all sixty men employed in raising ballast by such means. There are three steam dredging-engines employing each eight men, or twenty-four in all; so that there are altogether 220 labouring men engaged in the ballast service of the Trinity Company. Each of the carrying lighters has a staffsman or master and three men. The lighters all carry sixty tons of ballast, and make upon an average between three and four voyages a-week, or about seven in the fortnight. There is no place of deposit for the ballast brought up the river from the engines; it is left in the lighter until required. The ballast chiefly consists of gravel; indeed the ships will mostly refuse anything else. When there is a plentiful supply of ballast they will refuse clay in particular. Clayey ballast is what is termed bad ballast. Upon an average there are thirty loads, or 1800 tons of ballast, brought up by the lighters every day from the engines. In the course of the year there are between 550,000 and 600,000 tons of ballast supplied by the three steam dredging-machines. “It is about three-and-twenty years since the steam dredging-engine first came out,” said the party who gave me the above information. “For the last twenty years I should think the company have been raising about 500,000 tons of gravel from the bed of the river. Thirty years ago I thought the ballast would soon be out, but there appears to be little or no difference; and yet the shoals do not fill up again after being once taken away. In Barking Reach I am sure there is six feet more water now than there was thirty years ago; there was at that time a large shoal in that part of the river, called Barking Shelf; it was certainly a mile long and half a mile wide. The vessels would ground upon it long before low water. At some tides it used to strip dry, and at low tide generally there was about six foot of water over it. That part of the river is now the deepest about Barking, and as deep as the best of places in the Thames. When I first came to London we were prevented from getting the ballast from anywhere else than Barking, on account of the great shoals there; but now the great ballast-bed is between four and five miles lower down. The river has been very nearly cleared of shoals by the dredging-engines, from Limehouse Reach to the bottom of Half Reach. The only shoal in the way of the navigation below the Pool is what is called Woolwich Shelf: there is indeed another shoal, but this consists of stiff clay or conglomerate, and the engines cannot work through it.” The men on board the carrying-lighters are paid 5d. a-ton for bringing the ballast from the dredging-engines to the ships; this is equally divided among the four men. The staffsman, in addition to his fourth share, receives 10l. a-year for his extra duties; but out of this he has to buy oars for the boat and lighter, locks, fenders, and shovels. Upon an average the cost of these will be about 30s. a-year. Each man’s share of the sixty-ton load is 6s. 3d.; and there are about seven loads brought up by each lighter in the fortnight. Some weeks the men can earn as much as 37s., but at others they cannot get more than 12s. 6d. “I did myself only two load last week,” said my informant. “When there is little or no ‘vent,’ as we call it, for the ballast—that is, but a slight demand for it—we have but little work. Upon an average, each lighterman makes from 21s. to 22s. a-week. At the time of the strike among the pitmen in the North, the lightermen, generally, only did about two load a-week throughout the year; but then the following year we had as much as we could do. The Trinity Company, whom I serve, and have served for thirty years, are excellent masters to us when we are sick or well. The corporation of the Trinity House allow the married lightermen in their service 10s. and the single ones 7s. 6d. a-week, as long as they are ill. I have known the allowance given to men for two years, and for this we pay nothing to any benefit society or provident fund. If we belong to any such society we have our sick money from them independent of that. The superannuation money is now 6l. a-year; but I understand,” continued the man, “that the company intend increasing it next Tuesday. Some of the old men were ordered up to the house a little while ago, and were asked what they could live comfortably upon, and one of the gentlemen there promised them that no more of us should go to the workhouse. They do not provide any school for our children; a great many of the lightermen neither read nor write. I never heard any talk of the company erecting a school, either for the instruction of their men or their men’s families. All I can say is, that in all my dealings with the Trinity Corporation I have found them very kind and considerate masters. They are always ready to listen to the men, and they have hospitals for the sick in their employ and midwives for the wives of the labourers; and they bury, free of expense, most of the men that die in their service. To the widows of their deceased servants they allow 6l. a-year; and if there be any children, they give 2s. a-month to each under fourteen years old. I never knew them to reduce the lightermen’s wages; they have rather increased than lowered them. After the introduction of the steam-dredging machines we were better off than we were before. Previous to that time the lightermen were getters as well, and then the labour was so hard that the expenses of the men for living were more than they are now.”

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I now come in due order to

Of these I can at present give but a general description. The individual instances of oppression that I have sought out I must reserve for a subsequent page, when I most heartily hope that the publication of the iniquity of which these poor fellows are the victims, will be at least instrumental in putting an end to a most vile and wicked plan for the degradation and demoralization of our fellow-creatures. The tales I have to tell are such as must rouse every heart not positively indurated by the love of gain. I must, however, be here content, as I said before, with merely describing the system.

The duty of the ballast-heaver is to heave into the holds of the ship the ballast brought alongside the vessel by the Trinity-lighters from the dredging-engines. The ships take in ballast either in the docks or in the Pool. When the ship is cranky-built, and cannot stand steady after a portion of her cargo has been discharged, she usually takes in what is called shifting or stiffening ballast. The ballast is said to stiffen a cranky vessel, because it has the effect of making her firm or steady in the water. The quantity of ballast required by cranky vessels depends upon the build of the ships. Sixty tons of cargo will stiffen the most cranky vessel. I am informed by those who have been all their lives at the business, that they never knew a vessel, however cranky, but what 60 tons’ weight would stiffen her. Some vessels are so stiff-built, that they can discharge the whole of their cargo without taking in any ballast at all. These are generally flat-bottomed vessels, whereas cranky vessels are built sharp towards the keel. The colliers are mostly flat-bottomed vessels, and could in calm weather return to the north without either ballast or cargo in them. This, however, is not allowed by the owners. The generality of ships discharge all their cargo before they take in any ballast. The cranky-built ships form the exception, and begin taking in ballast when they are about three-parts discharged. When a ship requires ballast, the owner or one of his agents or servants applies to the Trinity House for the quantity needed. If the ship belong to the merchant service, and is lying in any of the docks, the owner has to pay 1s. 7d. per ton to the Trinity Company for the ballast supplied: but if the merchant vessel be lying in the Pool, then the price is 1s. 3d. per ton, and if the vessel be a collier, the price is 1s. per ton. On application being made at the Ballast Office, the party is supplied with a bill, specifying the name and situation of the vessel, the quantity of ballast required for her, and the price that has been paid for it. The bill is then taken to the Ruler’s Office, where it is entered in a book, and the ship supplied with the ballast, according to the place that she has on the books. If the weather is rough, a ship has often to remain three or four days without receiving the ballast she wants. The application for ballast is seldom made directly from the captain or shipowner himself. There are parties living in the neighbourhood of Wapping and Ratcliffe who undertake, for a certain sum per score of tons, to have the requisite quantity of ballast put aboard the ship. These parties are generally either publicans, grocers, butchers, lodging-house keepers or watermen, and they have a number of labourers dealing with them whom they employ to heave the ballast on board. The publicans, butchers, grocers, or lodging-house-keepers, are the ballast-contractors, and they only employ those parties who are customers at their houses. It is the owner or captain of the vessel who contracts with these “truckmen” for the ballasting of the ship at a certain price per score of tons, and the truckmen for that sum undertake not only to procure the ballast from the Trinity Company, and save the owner or captain all the trouble of so doing, but also to carry it from the Trinity-lighters on board the ship. The reason of the publicans, grocers, butchers, or lodging-house-keepers, undertaking the job is to increase the custom at their shops, for they make it a rule to employ no heavers but those who purchase their goods from them. The price paid to these truckmen varies considerably. Their principal profit, however, is made out of the labourers they employ. The highest price paid to the contractors for putting the ballast on board colliers (exclusive of the cost of the ballast itself) is 10s. per score tons. Many contractors charge less than this—not a few indeed undertake to do it for 9s., and there are one or two who will do it for 8s. the score. But these, I am informed, “are men who are trying to get the work away from the other contractors.” The highest price paid to the contractors for ballasting small merchant vessels is 12s. per score as well. For large vessels the price varies according to their size, and, consequently, the number of heavers required to put the ballast on board. The lowest price paid per score to the contractors for small merchant vessels is 10s. Eight or nine years ago the price for ballasting small merchant vessels was much higher. Then the highest price paid to the contractor was 15s. Since that time the prices both for merchant vessels and colliers have been continually falling. This, I am told, arises from the number of contractors increasing, and their continual endeavours to underwork one another. Before the establishment of the Coal-whippers’ Office, the contractors for ballast were solely publicans; and they not only undertook to put ballast on board, but to deliver the coals from the ships as well. At this time the publicans engaged in the business made rapid and large fortunes, and soon became shipowners themselves, but after the institution of the Coal-whippers’ Office, the business of the publicans, who had before been the contractors, declined. Since that period the contracts for ballasting ships have been undertaken by butchers and grocers, as well as publicans, and the number of these has increased every year, and according as the number of the contractors has increased, so have the prices decreased, for each one is anxious to undersell the other. In order to do this, the contractors have sought everywhere for fresh hands, and the lodging-house-keepers in particular have introduced labouring men from the country, who will do the work at a less price than those who have been regularly brought up to the business: and I am credibly informed, that whereas nine or ten years ago every ballast-heaver was known to his mates, now the strangers have increased to such an extent that at least two-thirds of the body are unacquainted with the rest. There is treble the number of hands at the work now, I am told, to what there was but a few years back. The prices paid by the contractors to the ballast-heavers are very little below what the owners pay to them, indeed some of the publicans pay the heavers the same price that they themselves receive, and make their profit solely out of the beer and spirits supplied to the workmen. The butchers and grocers generally pay the men 6d. and some 1s. in the score less than they themselves get; but, like the publican, their chief profit is made out of the goods they supply. The lodging-house-keepers seldom contract for the work. They are generally foremen employed by the publican, butcher, or grocer contracting, and they make it a rule that the ballast-heavers whom they hire shall lodge at their house, as well as procure their beer, meat, or grocery, as the case may be, from the shop of the contractor by whom they are employed. All the English ships that enter the port of London are supplied with ballast in this manner. The owners always make it a rule to contract with some publican, butcher, grocer, or lodging-house-keeper for the ballasting of their vessels, and it is impossible for the ballast-heaver to obtain employment at his calling but by dealing at the shops of some or other of these parties. According to the Government returns there were 170 ballast-heavers in the metropolis in 1841, and I am assured that there are more than double that number at present, or nearly 400 labourers engaged in the business. There are now 27 publicans who make a regular business of contracting for the supply of ballast. Besides these there are four butchers, the same number of grocers, and as many lodging-house-keepers. Further than this, there is a foreman attached to each of the public-houses, or butchers’ or grocers’ shops, and these foremen are mostly lodging-house-keepers as well. The foremen in general have the engagement of the heavers, and the first hands they employ are those who lodge at their houses: these hands are expected also to deal with the contractor under whose foreman they serve. The heavers generally, therefore, are obliged to lodge at the house of some foreman, and to obtain their meat, beer, and grocery from the different ballast-contractors, in order to obtain work; indeed, with the exception of clothing, the heaver is compelled to obtain almost every article he consumes through the medium of some contractor. The greater the number of contractors the heaver deals with, the greater is his chance of work. The rule with each of the contractors is to give credit to the hands they employ, and those who are the most in debt with them have the preference in labour. The butchers and grocers generally charge 1d. per lb. extra for everything they sell to the heavers, and the publicans make it up in adulteration. Each of the publicans, butchers, and grocers, who make a rule of contracting for the supply of ballast, has, on an average, two gangs of men dealing at his house, and if he have more ships to supply than his regular hands are capable of doing, then he sends the foreman to either of the places of call where the unemployed men wait for hire throughout the day. Each ship requires from four to six heavers to put the ballast on board, and the men generally ship about 50 tons in the course of the day. They often do as much as 100 tons, and sometimes only 20 in the day. The heavers are divided into constant and casualty men.

The constant men are the first gang working out of the public-house, or butchers’ or grocers’ shops. The constant men with the publicans are those that are the best customers. “If they didn’t drink,” said my informant, “they’d be thought of very little use.” These constant men make three times as much as the casualty men, or, in other words, they have three times as much to drink. Generally, one-fifth part of what the publican’s constant men earn is spent in drink. The casualty men are those who belong to no regular houses; but these, if taken on by a publican, are expected to spend the same amount in drink as the constant men. There are no ballast-heavers who are teetotalers. “Indeed it would be madness,” says my informant, “for a man to think of it, for to sign the pledge would be entirely to deprive himself and his family of bread.”

To complete the different classes of ballast-labourers, I will conclude with the statement of a casualty man:—

“I am about 57,” (said my informant, who was 6 feet high, and looked like a man far older than 57,) “and have been 35 years a ballast-heaver, with the exception of seven or eight years, when I had the care of some horses used in coal-waggons. When I first knew the trade, earnings was good. I might clear my 1l. a-week. On that I brought up four sons and one daughter—all now married. At that time, I mean when I first worked at ballast-heaving, the men were not so much employed by publicans and other tradesmen. A gang of men could then get work on their own account, a good deal easier than they can get it now through the tradesmen who supply the ballast. As the trade got more and more into the hands of the publicans and such-like, it grew worse and worse for such as me. We earned less, and were not anything like to call free men. Instead of my 1l. I had to stir myself to make 15s. or as low as 12s. a-week. Lately I have been what is called a casualty man. There’s constant men and casualties. Each publican has a foreman to look out, and get men, and see after them. These foremen—all of them that I know of—keeps lodgers, charging them 2s. 6d. or 3s. a-week for a room they could get but for this tie, for 2s.—ay, that they could. Suppose now a publican has a ship to supply with ballast, he acquaints his foreman, and the foreman calls on his lodgers, and sets them to work. These are the constant men. They have always the first turn out of the house. If they return from work at 4, and there’s another job at 5, they get it. That’s interest you see, sir. The more such men earn this way, the more they’re expected to spend with the publican. It’s only bad stuff they have to drink at a full price. It’s only when all the constant men are at work, and a job must be done at once, that me, and such as me, can get work. If I hear of a chance of a job I call on the foreman. If I have money, why, I must drink myself, and treat the foreman with a drop of gin, or what he fancies. If I haven’t the money, I have the worse chance for a job. Suppose I get a job and earn 6s. out of 60 tons of ballast; out of that 6s. I may have 4s., or, at most, 4s. 6d. to take home with me, after paying for what I must drink at the publican’s—what I’m forced to spend. Casualty men have sad trouble to get any work. Those that belong to the houses have all the call. Last week I was on the look-out every day, and couldn’t get a single job, nor earn a single farthing. Last night I had to get a bite of supper at my son’s, and a bite of breakfast this morning as well, and I had to borrow a pair of shoes to come out in. The best week’s work I’ve had this winter was 15s. I had five days in one ship. For that five days I was entitled, I fancy, to 20s., or may be 21s., so that the difference between that and the 15s. went for drink. I only wanted a pint of beer now and then at my work—two or three a day. The worst of it is, we don’t get drink at our work so much as at the public-house we’re employed from. If we want to go home, some of the constant men want to have more and more, and so the money goes. Other weeks I have carried home 10s., 8s., 5s., and many a week nothing, living as I could. It would be a deal better for poor men, like me, if tradesmen had nothing to do with ballast work. If the men that did the work were paid by the gentlemen what wants the ballast, there might then be a living for a poor man. As it is, it’s a very bad, hateful system, and makes people badly off. A ballast-man may sit in a tap-room, wet, and cold, and hungry, (I’ve felt it many a time,) and be forced to drink bad stuff, waiting to be paid. It always happens, unless they’re about shutting up, that we have to wait. We have no sick-fund or benefit societies. I declare to you, that if anything happened to me—if I was sick—I have nothing to call my own but what I’ve on; and not all that, as I’ve told you—and there’s nothing but the parish to look to. (Here the man somewhat shuddered.) I pay 2s. a-week rent.

“Then again, sir, there’s the basket-men at the docks—all the docks. They’re as bad to the poor man as the publican, or worse. The way they do is this. They’re not in any trade, and they make it their business to go on board ships—foreign ships—American generally. In better times, twenty or twenty-five years ago, there used to be 1s., and as high as 1s. 6d. paid for a ton from such ships to a gang of six ballast-men. I’ve earned six, seven, and eight shillings a-day myself then. We heaved the ballast out of the lighters with our shovels on to a stage, and from that it was heaved into the hold. Two men worked in the lighter, two on the stage, and two in the hold of the vessel. The basket-men manage to fill the hold now by heaving the ballast up from the lighter in baskets by means of a windlass. The basket-man contracts with the captain, and then puts us poor men at the lowest rate he can get; he picks them up anywhere, anything in the shape of men. For every half-crown he pays these men he’ll get 9s. for himself, and more. An American liner may require 300 tons of ballast, and, maybe, a captain will give a basket-man 8d. a-ton: that would be 10l. The basket-man employs six men, and he makes another. He never works himself—never—not a blow: but he goes swaggering about the ship when his men are at work, and he’s on the look-out in the streets at other times. For the 10l. he’ll get for the 300 tons, he’ll pay his men each 2s. 6d. for 60 tons, that is 3l. 15s., and so there’s 6l. 5s. profit for him. Isn’t that a shame, when so many poor men have to go without dinner or breakfast? There’s five basket-men to my knowledge. They are making money all out of poor men that can’t help themselves. The poor suffers for all.”

In order to assure myself of the intensity of the labour of ballast-heaving, of which I heard statements on all sides, I visited a gang of men at work, ballasting a collier in the Pool. My engagements prevented my doing this until about six in the evening. There was a very dense fog on the river, and all along its banks; so thick was it, indeed, that the water, which washed the steps where I took a boat, could not be distinguished, even with the help of the adjacent lights. I soon, however, attained the ballast-lighter I sought. The ballast-heavers had established themselves alongside a collier, to be filled with 43 tons of ballast, just before I reached them, so that I observed all their operations. Their first step was to tie pieces of old sail, or anything of that kind, round their shoes, ankles, and half up their legs, to prevent the gravel falling into their shoes, and so rendering their tread painful. This was rapidly done; and the men set to work with the quiet earnestness of those who are working for the morrow’s meal, and who know that they must work hard. Two men stood in the gravel (the ballast) in the lighter; the other two stood on “a stage,” as it is called, which is but a boarding placed on the partition-beams of the lighter. The men on this stage, cold as the night was, threw off their jackets, and worked in their shirts, their labour being not merely hard, but rapid. As one man struck his shovel into the ballast thrown upon the stage, the other hove his shovelful through a small porthole in the vessel’s side, so that the work went on as continuously and as quickly as the circumstances could possibly admit. Rarely was a word spoken, and nothing was heard but an occasional gurgle of the water, and the plunging of the shovel into the gravel on the stage by one heaver, followed instantaneously by the rattling of the stones in the hold shot from the shovel of the other. In the hold the ballast is arranged by the ship’s company. The throwing of the ballast through the porthole was done with a nice precision. A tarpaulin was fixed to prevent any of the ballast that might not be flung through the porthole being wasted by falling into the river, and all that struck merely the bounds of the porthole fell back into the lighter; but this was the merest trifle. The men pitched the stuff through most dexterously. The porthole might be six feet above the stage from which they hove the ballast; the men in the lighter have an average heave of six feet on to the stage. The two men on the stage and the two on the lighter fill and discharge their shovels twelve times in a minute; that is, one shovelful is shot by each man in every alternate five seconds; so that every one of the four men engaged at the work flings the height of 36 feet every minute, or 2160 feet in an hour; and in that time, according to the concurrent computation of the heavers, the four men may easily fling in 10 tons, or 5600 lbs. a man. The men work with the help of large lanterns, being employed mostly by night.

I shall now state the sentiments of the men generally, and then individually, upon the subject of their grievances.

To be certain as to the earnings of the men, to see their condition, and to hear from a large number of them their own statements as to the hardships they suffered, and the sums they gained, I met two bodies of the ballast-heavers, assembled without pre-arrangement. At one station 50 were present, at the other 30. The men were chiefly clad in coarse, strong jackets; some of them merely waistcoats, with strong, blue flannel sleeves, and coarse trowsers, thick with accumulated grease from long wear. They had, notwithstanding their privations, generally a hardy look. There was nothing squalid in their appearance, as in that of men who have to support life on similar earnings with in-door employment. Their manners were quiet, and far from coarse. At the first meeting 50 were present. One man said, “Well, I think I am the oldest man at present, and I don’t get above 5s. a-week; but that’s because I’m an old man, and cannot work with the young ones.” Upon an average the common men earned 10s. a-week the year through, and took home 5s. I inquired, “Are you all compelled to spend a great part of all you earn in drink with the publican?” The answer was simultaneously, “All of us—all—all!” Of the remainder of their earnings, after the drink deductions, the men were all satisfied they spent so much, that many only took 2s. 6d. a-week home to their wives and families on an average. Last week two earned 20s., the publican taking 10s. from each. Three earned 15s.; one of these took 1s. 6d. home, the other 3s., both working for publicans; the third, who worked for a grocer, took home 13s.; the other 2s. being spent in tea and sugar, he being a single man. Three earned 10s.; one, working for a publican, carried home 6s., the difference going in compulsory drink; another 4s., and another 5s. Six did one load of ballast, receiving 7s. 6d. each for it; one took home 4s. 11d.; another 6s. 6d. (a private job); another, who did a load for 5s. 3d., took home 2s. 3d.; the other two took home 5s. each. One man earned 3s., and took it all home, having worked at a private job for a foreigner. Fifteen earned nothing in the course of the last week. For the last fortnight nine had earned nothing. There were nine present that had earned something in the last three weeks. “The fortnight before Christmas,” said one, “I didn’t earn 5s. all that fortnight.” “Nor I, nor I,” said several others. On being asked, “Are you compelled to spend half of your earnings in drink?” there was a general cry of, “More than that, sir; more than that.” I asked if men were forced to become drunkards under this system; there was a general cry of, “We are; and blackguards, too.” Seventeen were married men. Of them, 3 had no children; 3 had one child; 4 had 2 children; 2 had 3; 3 had 4; one had 5; one had 6. The men all said, that to get away from the publican would be “a new life to them—all to their benefit—no force to waste money in drink—and the only thing that would do them good.” Many threw away the drink they had from the publicans, it was so bad; they drank Thames water rather. They were all satisfied “they earned 10s. a-week the year through, spending of that sum what they must spend, and what they were induced to spend, from 5s. to 7s. 6d. a-week.” “Another thing,” they said, “if you get a job, the publican will advance 1s.—now and then he may. They hate to give money; there’s trust for as much grog as you like.” All hailed with delight the least possible chance of being freed from the publican. One man said he was compelled often enough to pawn something of his own or his wife’s to go and spend it at the public-house, or he would have no chance of a job. All declare “such a system never was known to have been carried on for years.” Many said, “We shall be discharged if they know we have told you the truth.” They stated that the ballast-heavers numbered between 300 and 400. There were 60 craft, each requiring 4 heavers; and many men were idle when all the others were at work. Thirty were present when I counted the other meeting. A man said there might be three times that number looking for work then, and as many at work belonging to that station alone. In 1841 the census returns showed that there were 170 ballast-heavers; the men assembled declared that their numbers had more nearly trebled than doubled since then. Within the last two or three years many new hands had got to work, on account of the distress in Ireland. The men agreed with the others I had seen that they earned, one week with another, 10s., taking home but 5s. at the outside, and often only 2s. 6d. In answer to my questions they said, the winter is the best season; the trade is very slack in summer. Earnings in winter are pretty well double what they are in summer. Many agricultural labourers work among the heavers in winter, when they cannot be employed on the land. Of this body all said they were sober men till they took to ballast-heaving, and would like to become sober men again. (A general assent.) Three of the men had taken the pledge before becoming ballast-heavers, and were obliged to break it to get work. They had to drink five pots of beer, they declared, where, if they were free men, they would only drink one. When asked if the present system made drunkards, they answered with one voice, “All; every ballast-heaver in it.” Twenty were married men. All their wives and children suffered (this was affirmed generally with a loud murmur), and often had nothing to eat or drink while their husbands had but the drink. It was computed (with general concurrence) that 150 ballast-heavers paid foremen for lodgings, not half of them ever seeing the bed they paid for. About twelve years ago they could earn twice or three times as much as they can now; but prices were higher (12s. per score, for what is now 8s.), and the men were far less numerous. The following is a precise statement of the sums to which each ballast-heaver present was entitled, followed by the amount he had carried home the week before, after payment of his compulsory drinkings, and of what he might be induced to drink at the house of his employer while waiting to be paid:—

Earned.			Took home.
£0	12	0	£0	7	6
0	7	0	0	3	6
0	15	0	0	9	0
0	12	0	0	6	0
0	13	0	0	4	0
0	11	0	0	5	0
0	5	0	0	2	6
0	8	0	0	5	0
0	9	6	0	5	0
1	0	0	0	10	0
0	12	6	0	3	6
1	0	0	0	9	0
0	12	0	0	4	0
0	15	0	0	9	0
0	15	0	0	8	6
0	16	0	0	6	0
0	15	0	0	5	0
Nothing			Nothing
„			„
„			„
„			„
0	12	0	0	2	6
0	9	0	0	5	0
1	0	0	0	4	6
1	0	0	0	10	0
0	10	0	0	3	0
0	10	0	0	5	0
0	12	0	0	2	6
0	8	0	0	3	6
0	14	0	0	9	0
£16	13	0	£7	7	0

This statement shows, out of 11s. 1½d. earnings, a receipt of less than 5s. a-week.

According to the returns of the Trinity House, there were 615,619 tons of ballast put on board 11,234 ships in the year 1848. The ballast-heavers are paid at the rate of 6d. per ton for shovelling the ballast out of the Trinity Company’s lighters into the holds of vessels. Hence, the total earnings of the ballast-heavers in that year were 15,390l. 9s. 6d. And calculating two-thirds (the men say they always get rid of a half, and often three-fourths, of their earnings in drink) of this sum to have been spent in liquor, it follows that as much as 10,260l. 6s. 4d. went to the publican, and only 5,130l. 3s. 2d. to the labouring men. According to this estimate of their gross earnings, if we calculate the body of the ballast-heavers as numbering 350 men, the average wages of the class are about 16s. 6d. per week each man; or if we reckon the class at 400, then the average wages of each person would be about 14s. 6d. per week. From all I can learn this appears to be about the truth—the earnings of the men being about 15s. a-week, and their real income about 5s.

---

The men shall now speak for themselves.

The first that I saw were two of the better class of foremen, who volunteered to give me an account of the system.

“I am a foreman or ganger of the ballast-heavers,” said one. “I work under a man who is a publican and butcher; and I also work under another who is only a butcher. I, moreover, work under a grocer. I engage the different gangs of men for the parties under whom I work. I also pay the men. The publican, butcher, or grocer, as the case may be, agrees to give me 9s. a score tons. The foremen often give the men the same money as they themselves receive, barring a pot of beer or a quartern of gin that they may have out of the job. Some foremen take much more.”

Another foreman, who was present while I was taking the statement of this man, here observed, that “Many foremen claim tow-tow, or a ‘fifth-handed’ proportion—that is, they will have 10s. when the working men have only 5s. There is a great deal of imposition on the working-classes here, I can assure you; the general thing, when we go to a job out of a public-house is, that the publican expects the men to drink to the amount of 4s. out of every 1l., and 6s. out of every 30s. that’s coming to them—that is, one-fifth part of the men’s money must be spent in liquor. The drink is certainly not the best; indeed, if there is any inferior stuff they have it: it’s an obligation on them that they drink. If they refuse to drink, they won’t get employed, and that’s the plain truth of it. Oh, it’s long wanted looking to; and I’m glad at last to find some one inquiring into it. If they went to get the regular beer from the fair public-houses they would have to pay 3d. a pot for it; and at the contracting publicans’ they must give 4d. a pot, and have short measure, and the worst of stuff too. Every six pots of beer they give to the men is only five pots fair measure; and the rum they charge them 2d. half-a-pint more than the regular public-houses would, and far worse rum into the bargain. Besides the profit on their drink, some publicans charge 6d. per score tons as well. Out of the money coming to the men after the publican has been paid his score, many foremen claim one-fifth part over and above their regular share; or, in other words, the foremen takes two shares, and the men only one each. When the men have been paid, the publican paying them expects them to spend a further sum in drink, looking black at the man who goes away without calling for his pint or his pot, and not caring if they drink away the whole of their earnings. There’s a good many would be glad if the men sat in their houses and spent their last farthing, and then had to go home penniless to their wives and families.”

“I am a ‘ganger’ to a butcher as well as a publican,” said one of the foremen. “His practice is just the same as the publican’s. He receives 10s. per score tons, and pays me for the men 9s. The men and myself are all expected to spend about one-half of our earnings with the butcher in meat. He charges 6½d. per lb.; and at other houses, with ready money, I and the men might get it for 4d. as good. His meat is at least one-third dearer than other butchers’. I am also ganger to a grocer, and he gets about the same profit out of the men he employs—that is to say, the articles he supplies the men with are at least one-third dearer than at other shops. If anything, he makes more out of the men than the butcher; for if any man goes a score (which he always encourages) he stops the whole out the man’s earnings, and often leaves him without a penny after the job is done. When the publican, grocer, butcher, or lodging-house keeper has a contract for ballast, he directs the foreman working under him to get together the gang that regularly work from his house. This gang are men who always deal at the shop, and the contractor would dismiss me if I was to engage any other men than those who were his regular customers. Many a time a publican has told me that some man was a good, hard drinker, and directed me to engage him whenever I could. If a man sticks up a score, he also tells me to put him on first of all: the grocer and the butcher do the same. This system is the cause, I know, of much distress and misery among the men; the publicans make the men drunkards by forcing them to drink. I know many wives and children who starve half their time through it. They haven’t a bit of shoe or clothing, and all through the publican compelling the men to spend their earnings in drink. After the gang is paid, at least three out of the four get drunk; and, often, the whole four. Many a time I have seen the whole of the men reeling home without a penny to bless themselves, and the wife and children have to suffer for all this; they are ill-treated and half-starved: this I can safely say from my own knowledge.”

I next saw two men, who stated that they were oppressed by the publican, and the foreman also. The first said, “I work under a publican, and have to pay the foreman one-fifth of my earnings; I only have fourpence out of every shilling I earn, and I must be a sober man indeed to get that. Both the publican and the foreman get eightpence out of a shilling, and make their money out of my sweat. Nine years ago I was left, to my sorrow, with nine motherless children, and I am the slave of the publican. He is my destruction, and such are my sufferings, that I don’t care what I do if I can destroy the system; I shall die happy if I can see an end to it. I would go to bed supperless to-night, and so should my children, if I could stop it. After I have had a job of work, many’s the time I have not had a penny to take home to my children, it has all gone betwixt the foreman and the publican; and what is more, if I had brought anything home I should have stood a worse chance of work the next day. If I had gone away with sixpence in my pocket, the work that should have come to me would have gone to those who had spent all in the house. I can solemnly say that the men are made regular drunkards by the publicans. I am nine-and-twenty years dealing with this oppression, and I wish from my heart I could see an end to it, for the sake of my children and my fellow-creatures’ children as well. But I suffer quite as much from the foreman as I do from the publican. I am obliged to treat him before I can get a job of work. The man who gives him the most drink he will employ the first. Besides this, the foreman has two-fifth parts of the money paid for the job; he has twice as much as the men if he does any of the work; and if he does none of the work he takes one-fifth of the whole money: besides this, the men do three times the foreman’s labour. If I could get the full value of my sweat, I could lay by to-morrow, and keep my family respectably. In the room of that, now, my family want bread often—worse luck, for it hurts my feelings. I have been idle all to-day; for hearing of this, I came to make my statement, for it was the pride of my heart to do all that I could to put an end to the oppression. The publicans have had the best of me, and when the system is done away with I shan’t be much the better for it. I have been nine-and-twenty years at it, and it has ruined me both body and soul; but I say what I do for the benefit of others, and those who come after me.”

The other man said that he worked under a publican, and a grocer as well, and lodged with a foreman. “I pay 2s. a week for my lodgings,” he said; “there are two beds in the room, and two men in each. The room where we all sleep is not more than seven feet long by five feet wide, and barely seven feet high. There is no chimney in it. It is a garret, with nothing in it but the two beds. There hadn’t need be much more, for it wouldn’t hold even a chair besides. There’s hardly room, in fact, for the door to open. I find it very close sleeping there at night-time, with no ventilation, but I can’t help myself. I stay there for the job of work. I must stay; I shouldn’t get a day’s work if I didn’t. The lodgings are so bad, I’d leave them to-morrow if I could. I know I pay twice as much as I could get them for elsewhere. That’s one way in which I, for one, am robbed. Besides this, I am obliged to treat the foreman; I am obliged to give him two glasses of rum, as well as lodging at his house, in order to get employment. I have also to drink at the public-house; one-fifth of my money is kept, first and foremost, by the publican. That goes for the compulsory drink—for the swash which he sends us on board, and that we think the Thames-water is sweet and wholesome to it. It is expressly adulterated for our drink. If we speak a word against it we should be left to walk the streets, for a week and more forward. Even if we were known to meet a friend, and have a pint or a pot in another public-house, we should be called to an account for it by the publican we worked under, and he would tell us to go and get work where we spent our money; and, God knows, very little money we would have coming out of his house after our hard sweat. After the compulsory drink, and the publican has settled with us, and his fifth part of our hard-earned money for the swash—it’s nothing else—that he has given us to drink, then I should be thought no man at all if I didn’t have two pots of beer, or half-a-pint of gin, so that I would count myself very lucky indeed if I had a couple of shillings to take home, and out of that I should have to spend two-thirds of it to get another job. I am a married man, and my wife and three children are in Ireland. I can’t have them over, for it is as much as I can do to support myself. I came over here thinking to get work, and to send them money to bring them over after me, but since I have been here I have been working at the ballast-work, and I have not been able to keep myself. I don’t complain of what is paid for the work; the price is fair enough; but we don’t get a quarter of what we earn, and the Irish ballast-heavers suffer more here than in their own country. When I came over here I had a good suit of clothes to my back, and now I’m all in rags and tatters, and yet I have been working harder, and earning more money, that I did in all my life. We are robbed of all we get by the foremen and publicans. I was eight years a teetotaler before I went to ballast-work, and now I am forced to be a drunkard, to my sorrow, to get a job of work. My wife and children have a bit of land in Ireland to keep them, and they’re badly off enough, God knows. I can neither help them, nor send money to bring them over to me; nor can I get over to them myself. The grocers whom we work under rob us in the same manner. I have worked under one. He supplied bread, butter, tea, sugar, coffee, candles, tobacco, cheese, &c. It is a larger kind of chandlers’ shop. He charges us 5½d. for the same bread as I can buy for 4½d. at other shops. The tea, sugar, and other articles he supplies us with are at the same rate; they are either worse or dearer than at other shops. They generally manage to get a fifth part of our earnings wherever we go; but the grocers are best of all, for they don’t ruin our health, as what they give us don’t make us sick. I work for these two houses because the foreman that I lodge with has work out of both houses, and we are obliged to deal at the houses that he works under; if we didn’t we shouldn’t get the job, so that if we are not robbed by the publican we are by the grocer. They will have it out of the poor hard-working man, and the foreman must have the gain out of it as well. I only wish to God it was done away with, for it is downright oppression to us all, and if I never have another stroke of work I will strive all I can to have it done away with for the sake of my fellow-men.”

BALLAST-HEAVERS AT WORK IN THE POOL.

[From a Sketch.]

After these two cases came one who said,—“I have been three years a ballast-heaver. Just before that I came to this country. When I came I got to be a lodger with a foreman to a publican. I paid him 2s. 6d. a-week. My family, a wife and two children, came over when I had got work as a ballast-heaver. I couldn’t take them to the lodgings I then had; they were all for single men: so I had to take another place, and there I went to live with my family; but to keep my work I had to pay the foreman of the publican—him that lets these lodgings to the ballast-heaver—2s. 6d. a-week all the same as if I had been living there. That I had, and I had to do it for two years. Yes, indeed. I didn’t earn enough to pay for two lodgings, so two or three months back I refused to pay the 2s. 6d. a-week for a place I hadn’t set my foot in for two years, and so I lost my work under that foreman and his publican. If me and my children was starving for want of a bite of bread, neither of them would give me a farthing. There’s plenty as bad as them, too, and plenty used like me, and it’s a murdering shame to tax poor men’s labour for nothing.”

This man reiterated the constant story of being compelled to drink against his will, hating the stuff supplied to him, being kept for hours waiting before he was paid, and being forced to get drunk, whether he would or no. The man also informed me that he now works under a butcher, who pays 8s. a score to the hands he employs, he (the butcher) receiving from the captain 10s.

“Suppose,” he said, “I have a 60-ton job, I’d be entitled to 7s. 6d. without beer, or such-like; but under this butcher I get only 5s. 3d., and out of that 5s. 3d.—that’s all I get in hard money—I’m expected to spend 4s. or thereabouts in meat, such as he chooses to give. I have no choice; he gives what he likes, and charges me 6½d. a-pound for what I could buy at 4d. in a regular way. Very inferior stuff he keeps. Working under a butcher, we must all live on this poor meat. We can’t afford bread or vegetables to it.”

This same butcher, I was afterwards informed, had been twice fined for using false weights to customers, such as the man whose statement I have given; he even used wooden weights made to look like lead.

The following is an instance of the injustice done to the men by those who contract to whip rather than to heave the ballast on board.

“I now work,” said the man, whom I was referred to as an exponent of the wrong, “for Mr. ——, a publican who contracts to supply ships with ballast by the lump. He’ll contract to supply a ship with all the ballast she’ll want by the lump—that is, so much money for all she wants, instead of so much by the ton; or he may contract with a ship at 2s. 6d. a-ton. We—that is a gang of eight men—may put two loads or 120 tons on board in the course of a day. For those 120 tons he will receive 120 half-crowns, that’s 15l. For putting in those 120 tons we—that is, the eight ballast-heavers employed—receive 2s. 6d. a-day of 12 or 14 hours; that is 8 half-crowns or 20 shillings, with 3s. 6d. a-day for a basket-man, in addition to the eight, so leaving the publican a profit of 13l. 16s. 6d.” I could hardly believe in the existence of such a system—yielding a mere pittance to the labourer, and such an enormous profit to the contractor, and I inquired further into the matter. I found the statement fully corroborated by many persons present; but that was not all I learned. When the men, by incessant exertion, get in 120 tons in a day, as they often do, nothing is charged them for the beer they have had, four or five pints a-day each; but if only 60 tons be got in, as sometimes happens, through the weather and other circumstances, then the men employed on the half-a-crown a-day must pay for their own beer and pay their private scores for treating a friend, or the like. “There’s no chance of a job,” said my informant; “not a bit of it.” He continued: “Very bad drink it is—the worst—it makes me as sick as a dog. There’s two brothers there what they call blood-hounds; they’re called so because they hunt up the poor men to get them to work, and to see that they spend their money at their employer’s public-house when work’s done. If you don’t spend something, no bread to cut the next morning—not a bit of it—and no chance of another job there. He employs us ballast-heavers, when we are not at the ballast, in backing coals into the steamers.”

I have given the statement of a ballast-heaver as to the system pursued by those whom he called basket-men. The employer here alluded to is one of that class, the difference being, that the ballast-heavers shovel the ballast out of the lighter on to the stage, and from the stage through a port-hole into the hold. Four men are thus employed, two on the lighter, and two on the stage. With a large ship five men are employed, and two stages. When the basket-man or the man contracting by the lump is employed, this process is observed:—There are two men in the lighter alongside the vessel to be ballasted, whose business it is to fill five baskets. There are five men at the winch aboard ship employed heaving up these baskets, and a basket-man to turn them over and empty out their contents.

To ascertain that there was no provident fund—no provision whatever for sickness—I investigated the case of a man who, in consequence of illness occasioned by his trade, was afflicted with a pulmonary complaint. This man was formerly one of the wine-cellarmen in the London Dock; he was then made a permanent man at the St. Katherine’s Dock, and was dismissed for having taken a lighted pipe in while at his work; and for the last fourteen years and upwards he has been a ballast-heaver. I now give his wife’s statement:—“My husband has been ill for three months, and he has been six weeks in Guy’s Hospital, and I am afraid he’ll never get out again, for he kept up as long as he could for the sake of the children. We have five at home; one of them (twelve years old) I hope to get to sea, having two older sons at sea, and being the mother of twelve children altogether. I will tell you what led to my poor husband’s illness; he was a kind husband to me. I consider it was his hard work that made him ill, and his not getting his rights—not his money when entitled to it. After doing a heavy day’s work he had to go and sit in a cold tap-room, drinking bad beer; but it wasn’t beer—muck, I call it—and he had to wait to be paid, ay, and might have had to wait till the day after, and then come home cold and have to go to bed without a bit of victuals. His illness is owing to that; no horse could stand it long. Ballast-men are worse than slaves in the West Indies. When at work he earned what the others did. He only drank what he couldn’t help—the worst of stuff. No drink, no work. Six weeks ago he went to the hospital, I conveying him. When I returned home I found three strange men had turned my four children into the street, doing it in a brutal way. I rushed into the house, and one said, ‘Who are you?’ I seized the fellow who said this by the handkerchief, and put him out. One of them said, ‘Be off, you old Irish hag, you have no business here; we have possession.’ When I saw the children in the street, passion made me strong, and so I put him out. The collector of the rent, who employed the broker, is a publican, for whom my husband worked as a ballast-heaver until he was unable to work from illness. I was given into custody for an assault, and taken before Mr. Yardley. He considered the assault proved, and as an honest woman I couldn’t deny it, and so I had fourteen days with bread and water. The children were placed in the workhouse, where they were well treated. I was very glad they were so taken care of. As soon as I got out I went to see about my children; that was the first thing I did. I couldn’t rest till I did that. I brought them home with me, though it was only to bread and water, but I was with them. I only owed about 15s. rent, and had been four years in the house at the time the publican put the broker in. We paid 6s. 6d. a-week; it was no use asking such a man as that any mercy. He was in the habit of employing ballast-heavers for many years; and if that doesn’t harden a man’s heart, nothing will. In general these ballast publicans are cruel and greedy. At present I go out washing or charing, or doing anything I can to maintain my children, but work’s very slack. I’ve had a day and a-half this fortnight, earning 2s. 6d., that’s all for a fortnight; the parish allows me four loaves of bread a-week. The children, all boys, just get what keeps a little life in them. They have no bed at night, and are starved almost to death, poor things. I blame the system under which my husband had to work—his money going in drink—for leaving me destitute in the world. On Christmas-day we lived on a bit of workhouse bread—nothing else, and had no fire to eat it by. But for the money gone in drink we might have had a decent home, and wouldn’t so soon have come to this killing poverty. I have been tenderly reared, and never thought I should have come to this. May God grant the system may be done away with, for poor people’s sake.”

I now give the statement of two women, the wives of ballast-heavers, that I may further show how the wives and families of these men are affected by the present system.

“I have been 11 years married,” said one, “and have had five children, four being now living.”

The other woman had been married 23 years, but has no children living.

“We are very badly off,” said the woman with a family, “my husband drinking hard. When I first knew him—when we were sweethearts in a country part of Ireland—he was a farm-labourer and I was a collier’s daughter, he was a sober and well-behaved man. Two years after we were married, and he was a sober man those two years still. We came to London to better ourselves, worse luck. The first work he got was ballast-heaving. Then he was obligated to drink or he couldn’t get work; and so, poor man, he got fond of it. This winter oft enough he brings me and the children home 2s. or 1s. 6d. after a job; and on that we may live for two or three days,—we’re half starved, in course. The children have nothing to eat. It’s enough to tear any poor woman’s heart to pieces. What’s gone into the publican’s till would get the children bread, and bedding, and bits of clothes. Nothing but his being employed at ballast-heaving made him a drunkard, for he is a drunkard now. He often comes home and ill-uses me, but he doesn’t ill-use the children. He beats me with his fists; he strikes me in the face; he has kicked me. When he was a sober man he was a kind, good husband; and when he’s sober now, poor man, he’s a kind, good husband still. If he was a sober man again with his work, I’d be happy and comfortable to what I am now. Almost all his money goes in drink.”

“We can’t get shoes to our feet,” said the second woman.

“When my husband is sober and begins to think,” (continued the first,) “he wishes he could get rid of such a system of drinking,—he really does wish it, for he loves his family, but when he goes out to work he forgets all that. It’s just the drink that does it. I would like him to have a fair allowance at his work, he requires it; and beyond that it’s all waste and sin: but he’s forced to waste it, and to run into sin, and so we all have to suffer. We are often without fire. Much in the pawn-shop do you say, sir? Indeed I haven’t much out.”

“We,” interposed the elder woman, “haven’t a stitch but what’s in pawn except what wouldn’t be taken. We have 50s. worth in pawn altogether—all for meat and fire.”

“I can’t, I daren’t,” the younger woman said, “expect anything better while the present system of work continues. My husband’s a slave, and we suffer for it.”

The elder woman made a similar statement. After his score is paid, she said, her husband has brought her 4s., 3s., 2s., 1s., and often nothing, coming home drunk with nothing at all. Both women stated that the drink made their husbands sick and ill, and for sickness there was no provision whatever. They could have taken me to numbers of women situated and used as they were. The rooms are four bare walls, with a few pieces of furniture and bedding such as no one would give a penny for. The young woman was perfectly modest in manner, speech, and look, and spoke of what her husband was and still might be with much feeling. She came to me with a half-clad and half-famished child in her arms.

I then took, for the sake of avoiding repetition, the statements of two ballast-heavers together—constant men—working under different publicans. The account they gave me of the way in which the publicans contracted to ballast a ship was the same as I have given elsewhere.

“I have been twenty years a ballast-heaver,” said one, “and all that time I have worked for a publican, and haven’t a coat to my back. Twenty years ago the publicans had the same number of hands, but had more work for them, and I might then earn 20s. a-week; but I couldn’t fetch that home from the publican. He expected me to spend one-half of my earnings with him; and when I left his house drunk, I might spend the other half. I’ve drunk gallons of drink against my will. I’ve drunk stuff that was poison to me. I turned teetotaler about six months ago, and the publican, my employer, sacked me when he found it out, saying, ‘He’d be d——d if he’d have such men as me—he didn’t make his living by teetotalers.’”

“Yes,” added the other man, “and so my publican told me; for I turned teetotaler myself somewhere about seven years ago, and took the pledge from Father Mathew in the Commercial-road. The publican told me, that if Father Mathew chose to interfere with me, why Father Mathew might get employment for me, for he—that’s the publican—wouldn’t. So I was forced to break my pledge to live—me and my youngsters—I had six then, and I’ve buried two since.”

“Work,” resumed the man who first gave me the statement, “keeps getting worse. Last week I carried only 8s. home, and if I’d got paid by the captain of the ship for the amount of work I did, and on the same terms as the publican, I should have taken home at the very least 16s. The publican that employs us gives us only 8s. a-score, and receives 10s. from the captain. All the publicans don’t do this; some give what they get from the captain, but some publicans takes two-thirds, and that’s the truth. (The second man assented.) One week with another I’ve taken home, this winter, from 12s. to 13s., and but for this shameful starvation system, having to work for a publican’s profit, and to drink his drink, I’d take home my 20s. every week. It makes a man feel like a slave; indeed, I’m not much better. We should be in heaven if we got away from the publican or butcher either; it’s compulsion one’s life through. Some of the publicans have as many as sixty single men lodging in their houses, paying half-a crown a-week; ay, and men that don’t lodge with them, when the house is full, must pay half-a-crown all the same, to get a job of work, as well as paying for the places where they do lodge.”

The first man continued:—

“The gin and rum is the worst that can be supplied; but we must drink it or waste it. We often spill it on the ballast, it’s that bad”—[“Often, often,” was the response of the other man.] “And that’s not the worst. When we get a job of putting sixty tons of ballast on board, we are forced to take six pots of beer with us to our work; but only four pots are supplied, and we must pay for six. We are robbed on every side. I cannot describe how bad it is; a man would hardly believe it; but all will tell you the same—all the men like us.” [So, indeed, the poor fellows did afterwards.] “When we call to be paid, we are kept for hours in a cold tap-room, forced to drink cold stuff without being let have a strike of fire to take the chill off it.”

The other man then made a further statement.

“I’ve been forced to put my sticks in pawn—what I had left—for I was better off once, though I was always a ballast-heaver and have worked for the same publican fourteen years. I have 3l. in pawn now, I blame this present system for being so badly off—sorrow a thing else! Now just look at this: A single man, a lodger, will go into a publican’s and call for 1s. worth of rum, and the publican will call me a scaly fellow, if I don’t do the same; that will be when I’d rather be without his rum, if I got it for nothing.” One publican (the men gave me this account concurrently, and it was fully confirmed by a host of others,) married the niece of a waterman employed to pull the harbour-master about the river. He kept a public-house, and carried on the system of lodgers for ballast-heaving, making a great deal of money out of them; by this means he got so much work at his command, that the rest of the publicans complained to the harbour-master, and the man was forced to give up his public-house. When he had to give it up he made it over to his niece’s husband, and that man allowed him 1s. for every ship he brought him to ballast. “I’ve known him—that’s the publican that succeeded the man I’ve been telling you of—have 40 ships in a day: one week with another he has had 100 ships; that’s 5l., and he has them still. It’s the same now. We’ve both worked for him. His wife’s uncle (the harbour-master’s waterman) says to the captains, and he goes on board to see them after the harbour-master’s visit to them,—‘Go to ——; get your ballast of him, and I’ll give you the best berth in the river.’”

I next obtained an interview with a young man who was the victim of a double extortion. He made the following statement:—

“I work under a publican, and lodge in his house. I have done so for five years. I pay 2s. 6d. a-week, there being ten of us in two rooms. We’re all single men. These two rooms contain four beds, three in the larger room and one in the other. We sleep two in a bed, and should have to sleep three in some; only two of the men don’t occupy the lodgings they pay for. The bigger room may be 16 feet by 10; the smaller about a quarter that size. You cannot turn in it—the bed cannot be brought out of the room without being taken to pieces. We must cook in the tap-room, which is a room for the purpose; it contains forms and an old table, with a large grate. We are found fryingpans and gridirons, and pans, and fire, and candle; but we must find our own knives and forks. The room is shamefully dirty—I mean the tap (cooking) room. It looks as if it hadn’t been washed for years. It’s never been washed to my knowledge. The bed-rooms are very little better. The bedding is very bad—a flock bed, with a pair of blankets and quilt, and a sort of sheet clean once a-fortnight. There’s very bad ventilation and very unpleasant smells. It’s a horrid den altogether. None of us would stop there if we could help it—but we can’t help it, for if we leave we get no work. We are forced to find locks for our rooms, to keep our bits of things from being stolen. One man was robbed; my clothes was in the box with his; the box was broken open, but the clothes was left, and a few halfpence put away in the box was taken. There’s lots of bugs; we can only sleep after hard work, and we must drink when we’re at work. I’ve poured my beer into the river many a time, it was so bad—it tasted poisonous. We’ve drank Thames water rather than the bad beer we’re all forced to drink. To show how we’re treated I’ll tell you this: I owe so much, and so much a week’s stopped to pay it; but it never gets less, I am always charged the same. There it is, the same figures are on the slate, keep paying, paying off as you will. They won’t rub it off, or if they do rub it off it’s there again the next time. Only last week a man was discharged for grumbling, because he objected to paying twice over. He hasn’t had a day’s work since.”

Then came one who was the employé of a publican and grocer. He said:

“I work under a publican and grocer. I’m any man’s man. I stand with my fingers in my mouth at Ratcliff-cross watching, and have done it these last nine years. Half of us is afraid to come and speak to you. When I volunteered, the big-whiskered and fat-faced men (foremen) were looking at me and threatening me for coming to you. No matter, I care for nobody. Worse nor I am I can’t be. No more I can’t. I go to one publican’s to work 60 tons, and for that I get 4s., but 6s. is my rights. The remainder 2s. is left—I’m forced to leave it—for me to drink out on Sunday night. If I was in a fair house the publican would pay me 7s. 6d.; as it is I get 4s. and 2s. must be drunk,—it’s the rule at that house—he’s in opposition and works low. If I was at liberty it wasn’t to his house I’d go for a drink. The hardest-drinking man gets work first, and when a man’s drunk he doesn’t care what stuff he puts into his belly. Before we go to a job the four of us are expected to drink half-a-pint of rum or gin; the publicans expect it. If I was a teetotaler I must pay my whack and the other men may drink it, for the score against the ship is divided among the men equal.

“Suppose two foremen were to meet and have a drop of rum or brandy together, and a little talk about a ship’s ballast, that’s charged to us poor fellows—it’s stuck up to us—but we mustn’t say nothing, though we know we never had a sup of it; but if we say a word it’s all up—no more work.

“Once on a time I worked for a publican close by here, and when I came to the house I had nothing to drink. My oldest mate whispered to me as we were on our way from the London Dock, and told me to speak my mind, for he knew there was a false score chalked against the ship; and the others was afraid to say a word. Well, I did speak when I got into the house, and the foreman was there, and he asked me what business I had to speak more than another? There was 6s. charged to the score for drink that we never touched or ever saw,—not a sup of it. He—that’s the foreman—told me I shouldn’t go to finish the ship; I said I would, in spite of him. I told the missus I expected she wouldn’t give any more drink but what we had ourselves, or would get when we came home; and she said she wouldn’t; and that’s two years ago; but I haven’t had a job from them parties since.

“Suppose I get to the public-house for my money at six in the evening, I am forced to wait there till eleven, until I am drunk very often—drunk from vexation; stopt when I’m hungry after five or six hours’ work on the river, and not let take the money home to my wife and family, nor let have anything to eat, for I’m waiting for that money to get a bit of grub; but when I’m half drunk the hunger goes off just for a time. I must go and drink in a morning if my children go without breakfast, and starve all day till I come home at night. I can get nothing from my employers but drink. If I ask them for a shilling I can’t get it. I’ve finished my load of ballast without breaking my fast but on the beer we’re forced to take with us.

“I’ve found grocers better to work under than publicans,—there’s a great deal more honesty in them. They charge a middling fair price; but they’ll have tow-row out of it,—that’s dry money—so much a score. They’ll stop 6d. a score only for giving us a job. I can get as good sugar as I get of them at 4d. for 3½d.; but then the difference between the grocer and publican is, that the wife and family can have a bit of something to eat under the grocer, but not under the publican. All goes in drink with the publican; but we cannot carry drink home. When I go home drunk from the publican’s, I tumble on the floor, perhaps, and say, ‘Is there anything to eat for me?’ and my old woman says, ‘Where’s the money? give me that and I’ll give you something to eat.’ Then a man gets mad with vexation, and the wife and children runs away from him; they are glad to get away with their lives, they’re knocked about so. It makes a man mad with vexation to see a child hungry,—it kills me; but what the foreman gives me I must take; I dare never say no. If I get nothing—if all is gone in drink—I must go from him with a blithe face to my starving children, or I need never go back to him for another job.”

I shall now set forth as fully as possible the nature of the system by which the ballast-heaver is either forced by the fear of losing all chance of future employment, or induced by the hope of obtaining the preference of work from the publican, his employer, to spend at least one half of his earnings every week in intoxicating drinks. Let me, however, before proceeding directly to the subject of my present communication, again lay before the reader the conclusions which I lately drew from the Metropolitan Police returns for 1848, concerning the intemperance of the labouring classes of London. It is essential that I should first prove the fact, and show its necessary consequences. This done, the public will be more ready to perceive the cause, and to understand that until this and similar social evils are removed, it is worse than idle to talk of “the elevation of the masses,” and most unjust, to use the mildest term, to condemn the working men for sins into which they are positively forced. To preach about the virtues of teetotalism to the poor, and yet to allow a system to continue that compels them to be drunk before they can get work—not to say bread—is surely a mockery. If we would really have the industrious classes sober and temperate men, we must look first, it seems, to their employers. We have already seen that the intemperance of the coal-labourer is the fault of the employer, rather than the man; but we have only to go among the ballast-labourers to find the demoralization of the working man arising, not from any mere passive indifference, but from something like a positive conspiracy on the part of the master.

According to the criminal returns for the metropolis, there were 9197 males and 7264 females, making altogether a total of 16,461 individuals, charged with drunkenness in the year 1848. This makes one in every 110 individuals in London a drunkard—a proportion which, large as it seems, is still less than one-half what it was some ten or fifteen years back.

For the sake of comparison I subjoin, in the following page, a Table, taken from the Government Report on Drunkenness; being a return of the number of charges of drunkenness which have been entered upon the books of the Metropolitan Police in the years 1831, 1832, and 1833, with the number of officers employed in, and the locality of, each division: also the amount of population in each, according to the Parliamentary returns of 1831.

Locality of each Division.	No. of Officers employed in each Division.	Computed Population in each Division, according to the Parliamentary Returns.	1831.			1832.			1833.			Public-Houses and Beer-Shops in each Division.
			Males.	Females.	Total.	Males.	Females.	Total.	Males.	Females.	Total.	Public Houses.	Beer-Shops.	Total.
A. Whitehall	120	6,238	406	230	636	384	243	627	371	228	599	32	5	37
B. Westminster	168	53,147	1,596	800	2,396	1,829	831	2,660	1,864	1,193	3,057	186	58	244
C. St. James’s	188	105,862	2,290	1,127	3,417	2,119	1,055	3,174	2,208	1,256	3,464	302	20	322
D. St. Marylebone	166	122,206	1,375	727	2,102	1,300	650	1,950	1,019	605	1,624	148	54	202
E. Holborn	168	75,241	1,785	1,079	2,864	1,241	897	2,138	879	618	1,497	249	19	368
F. Covent Garden	168	41,010	2,238	1,555	3,793	2,165	1,617	3,782	1,665	1,388	3,053	309	28	332
G. Finsbury	236	115,266	2,141	1,423	3,564	2,192	1,440	3,632	1,916	1,270	3,186	368	100	468
H. Whitechapel	191	119,042	1,253	812	2,065	1,631	1,268	2,899	1,803	1,295	3,098	359	102	461
K. Stepney	296	143,137	899	574	1,473	1,387	732	2,119	1,125	762	1,887	437	131	568
L. Lambeth	191	101,561	1,732	1,271	3,003	1,581	1,234	2,815	1,291	944	2,235	183	70	153
M. Southwark	189	107,537	1,655	1,050	2,705	1,470	982	2,452	1,284	843	2,127	321	66	387
N. Islington	269	140,407	850	373	1,223	1,165	573	1,738	826	409	1,235	267	144	311
P. Camberwell	243	77,825	256	87	343	201	75	276	203	80	283	138	96	234
R. Greenwich	212	58,778	363	137	500	513	240	753	418	210	628	283	51	334
S. Hampstead	223	112,136	573	301	874	613	326	939	697	319	1,016	138	74	212
T. Kensington	184	70,296	124	24	148	303	109	412	464	137	601	220	93	313
V. Wandsworth	186	62,039	212	35	247	210	60	270	235	55	290	133	76	209
Total	3,398	1,511,728	19,748	11,605	31,353	20,304	12,332	32,636	18,268	11,612	29,880	4,073	1,187	5,155

Locality of each Division.	No. of Officers employed in each Division.	Computed Population in each Division, according to the Parliamentary Returns.	1831.
			Males.	Females.	Total.
A. Whitehall	120	6,238	406	230	636
B. Westminster	168	53,147	1,596	800	2,396
C. St. James’s	188	105,862	2,290	1,127	3,417
D. St. Marylebone	166	122,206	1,375	727	2,102
E. Holborn	168	75,241	1,785	1,079	2,864
F. Covent Garden	168	41,010	2,238	1,555	3,793
G. Finsbury	236	115,266	2,141	1,423	3,564
H. Whitechapel	191	119,042	1,253	812	2,065
K. Stepney	296	143,137	899	574	1,473
L. Lambeth	191	101,561	1,732	1,271	3,003
M. Southwark	189	107,537	1,655	1,050	2,705
N. Islington	269	140,407	850	373	1,223
P. Camberwell	243	77,825	256	87	343
R. Greenwich	212	58,778	363	137	500
S. Hampstead	223	112,136	573	301	874
T. Kensington	184	70,296	124	24	148
V. Wandsworth	186	62,039	212	35	247
Total	3,398	1,511,728	19,748	11,605	31,353

1832.			1833.			Public-Houses and Beer-Shops in each Division.
Males.	Females.	Total.	Males.	Females.	Total.	Public Houses.	Beer-Shops.	Total.
384	243	627	371	228	599	32	5	37
1,829	831	2,660	1,864	1,193	3,057	186	58	244
2,119	1,055	3,174	2,208	1,256	3,464	302	20	322
1,300	650	1,950	1,019	605	1,624	148	54	202
1,241	897	2,138	879	618	1,497	249	19	368
2,165	1,617	3,782	1,665	1,388	3,053	309	28	332
2,192	1,440	3,632	1,916	1,270	3,186	368	100	468
1,631	1,268	2,899	1,803	1,295	3,098	359	102	461
1,387	732	2,119	1,125	762	1,887	437	131	568
1,581	1,234	2,815	1,291	944	2,235	183	70	153
1,470	982	2,452	1,284	843	2,127	321	66	387
1,165	573	1,738	826	409	1,235	267	144	311
201	75	276	203	80	283	138	96	234
513	240	753	418	210	628	283	51	334
613	326	939	697	319	1,016	138	74	212
303	109	412	464	137	601	220	93	313
210	60	270	235	55	290	133	76	209
20,304	12,332	32,636	18,268	11,612	29,880	4,073	1,187	5,155

Now, comparing these returns with those of the year before last, we find that the decrease of intemperance in the metropolis has been most extraordinary. In the year 1831, 1 in every 48 individuals was drunk; in 1832 the number increased to 1 in 46; whereas in 1833 it decreased to 1 in 50; and in 1848 the average had again fallen to 1 individual to every 110. This decrease of intemperance was attended with a similar decrease in the number of metropolitan beer-shops. In 1833 there were 1182, and in 1848 only 779 beer-shops in London. Whether this decrease preceded or succeeded, and so was the cause or the consequence of the increased sobriety of the people, it is difficult to say. The number of public-houses in London, however, had increased during the same period from 4073 to 4275. Upon the cause and effect of this I leave others to speculate.

Of the total, 16,461 persons, male and female, who were charged with being intoxicated in the year 1848, no less than one individual in every seven belonged to the labouring class: and, excluding the females from the number, we shall find that, of the males, every fourth individual that was taken up for drunkenness was a labouring man. Taking the whole population of London, temperate and intemperate, only 1 in every 110 is a drunkard; but with the labouring classes the average is as high as 1 in every 22. Of course, where the habit of drinking is excessive, we may expect to find also excessive pugnacity. That it is the tendency of all intoxicating liquors to increase the irritability of the individual is well known. We might infer therefore, à priori, that the greater number of common assaults would be committed by the greatest drunkards. In 1848 there were 7780 individuals assaulted in London, and nearly one-fourth of these, or 1882, were attacked by labouring men, one in every 26 of the entire body of labourers having been charged with this offence. The “simple larceny,” of which the labouring classes appear, by the same returns, to be more guilty than any other body of individuals, is also explained by their inordinate intemperance. When a man’s bodily energy is destroyed by drink, labour is so irksome to him that he would sooner peril his liberty than work. What wonder, then, that as many as 1 in every 28 labourers should be charged with theft? Whereas, of the rest of the population there are only 1 in every 226 individuals. Thus, of the labouring classes, 1 in every 22 is charged with being drunk; 1 in every 26 with committing an assault; and 1 in every 28 with being guilty of simple larceny.

For the truth of the connexion existing between drink, pugnacity, and theft, I would refer to the statement of one of the most intelligent and experienced of the coal whippers,—one, indeed, to whose unceasing and heroic exertions that class principally owe their redemption:—“The children of the coal-whippers,” he told me, “were, under the old system, almost reared in the tap-room.” He himself had known as many as 500 youths that were transported; and this, be it remembered, out of a class numbering only 2000 men.

Such, then, are the proved consequences of an inordinate use of intoxicating liquors. It becomes, therefore, the duty of every one who is anxious for the well-being of the people, to diminish the occasions for drinking wherever possible. To permit the continuance of certain systems of employment and payment, which are well known, both to tempt and compel the men to indulge in intoxicating liquors, is at once to breed the very crimes that it is the office of Government to suppress. The custom pursued by the coal-merchants of paying the labourers in their employ in public-houses, as I lately exposed, appeared bad enough. The “backer,” jaded and depressed with his excessive work through the day, was entrapped into the public-house in the evening, under the pretence of receiving his wages. Once inside he was kept waiting there hour after hour by the publican (who of course was out of silver, and had to send some distance for it). Beer is called for by the men in the meantime. Under the influence of the stimulant, the fatigue and the depression begin to leave the labourers, the burden that is still on their backs (it will be remembered that such is the description of the men themselves) is shaken off, and their muscles no longer ache and are stiff, but relax, while their flagging spirits gradually revive under the potent charm of the liquor. What wonder, then, that the poor creatures finding it so easy, and when the habit is once formed, so pleasant, a cure for their ills, should be led to follow up one draught with another and another? This system appeared to me to be vicious enough, and to display a callousness on the part of the employers that quite startled me. But the system under which the ballast-labourers are now suffering, is an infamy hardly to be credited as flourishing in these days. I have, therefore, been at considerable pains to establish such a mass of evidence upon the subject as shall make all earnest men look upon the continuance of such a system as a national dishonour.

Before dealing with the Lumpers, or those who discharge the timber from ships—in contradistinction to the stevedores, or those who stow the cargoes of vessels,—I will give the following report of a meeting of the ballast-heavers’ wives. It is the wife and children who are the real sufferers from the intemperance of the working-man; and being anxious to give the public some idea of the amount of misery entailed upon these poor creatures by the compulsory and induced drunkenness of the husbands, I requested as many as could leave their homes to meet me at the British and Foreign School, in Shakespeare-walk, Shadwell. The meeting consisted of the wives of ballast-heavers and coal-whippers. The wives of the coal-whippers had come there to contrast their present state with their past, with a view of showing the misery they had endured when their husbands were under the same thraldom to the publican as the ballast-heavers are now, and the comparative happiness which they have experienced since they were freed from it. They had attended unsolicited, in the hope, by making their statements public, of getting for the ballast-heavers the same freedom from the control of the publican which the coal-whippers had obtained.

The meeting consisted of the wives of ballast-heavers and coal-whippers, thirty-one were present. Of the thirty-one, nine were the wives of coal-whippers, the remaining twenty-two the wives of ballast-heavers. Many others, who had expressed a desire to attend, were prevented by family cares and arrangements; but, small as the meeting was comparatively, it afforded a very fair representation of the circumstances and characters of their husbands. For instance, those who were coal-whippers’ wives appeared comfortable and “well to do.” They wore warm gowns, had on winter-bonnets and clean tidy caps underneath; the ballast-heavers’ wives, on the contrary, were mostly ragged, dejected, and anxious-looking.

An endeavour was made to ascertain in the first instance how many children each person had. This was done by questioning them separately; and from the answers it appeared that they all had families. Eight had one child each, the rest varied from two to eight, and one woman stated that she had twelve children, all of whom were living, but that only four resided now with her and her husband. Five had infants in their arms, and several had children sick, either at home or in some hospital.

In the next place the ballast-heavers’ wives were asked whether their husbands worked under publicans? “All of them,” was the reply, “work under publicans;” and, said one, “Worse luck for us,”—a sentiment that was very warmly concurred in by all the rest.

This fact having been specifically ascertained from each woman, we proceeded to inquire from them separately how much their husbands earned, and how much of their earnings was spent at the publicans’ houses through which they obtained work, or where they were paid.

“My husband,” said the first woman, “works under a publican, and I know that he earns now 12s. or 13s. a-week, but he brings home to me only half-a-crown, and sometimes not so much. He spends all the rest at a public-house where he gets his jobs, and often comes home drunk.”

“My husband,” exclaimed the second, “will sometimes get from 24s. to 28s. a-week, but I never see anything the likes o’ that money from him. He spends it at the publican’s. And when he has earned 24s. he will sometimes bring home only 2s. or 2s. 6d. We are badly off, you may be sure, when the money goes in this way. But my husband cannot help spending it, for he is obliged to get his jobs at the public-house.”

“Last week,” interposed another, “we had not one penny coming into our house; and the week before—which was Christmas week—my husband got two jobs which would come, he told me, to 8s. or 9s. if he had brought it all home; but he only brought me 1s. This was all the money I had to keep me and my five children for the whole week; and I’m sure I don’t know how we got through. This is all owing to the public-house. And when we go to fetch our husbands at eleven or twelve o’clock at night they shut us out, and say they are not there, though we know very well they are inside in a back place. My husband has been kept in that back place many a time till two or three in the morning—then he has been turned out and come home drunk, without 6d. in his pocket, though the same day he has received 8s. or 9s. at the same public-house.”

“They go to the public-house,” added another woman, “to get jobs, and to curry favour they spend their money there, because if they did not spend their money they would never get a job. The men who will drink the greatest quantity of money will get the most jobs. This leaves their families and their wives miserable, and I am sure me and my poor family are miserable enough.”

“But this,” interposed a quiet, elderly woman, “is the beginning of the tenth week, in all of which my husband has only had four jobs, and all I have received of him during that time is 1s. 3½d. a-week, and we stand in 2s. 6d. a-week rent. I am sure I don’t know how we get along. But our publicans are very civil, for my husband works for two. Still, if he does not drink a good part of it away we know very well he will get no more work.”

“It is very little,” said a female with an infant in her arms, “that my husband earns; and of what little he does earn he does not fetch much to me. He got one job last week, heaving 45 tons, and he fetched me home 1s. 6d. for it. I was then in lodgings at 1s. 6d. a-week, but I could not afford them, but now I’m in lodgings at 9d. a-week. This week he has no work yet. In Christmas week my man told me he earned 25s., and I believe he did, but he only fetched me home 8s. or 9s. on Saturday. My husband works for a publican, and it was at his house he spent his money. One day last week he asked the publican to give him a job, and he said, ‘I cannot give you a job, for there is nothing against you on the slate but 1s.,’ and so he got none there. My infant is six weeks old to-day, and this woman by me (appealing to the female next to her) knows well it is the truth that I tell—that for two nights in last week my child and myself were obliged to go to bed breadless. We had nothing neither of those two days. It was the same in one night the week before Christmas, though my husband received that night 8s., but all was spent at the public-house. On Christmas night we could not get any supper. We had no money, and I took the gown off my back and pawned it for 2s. to provide something for us to eat. I have nothing else to say but this—that whatever my husband earns I get little or nothing of it, for it goes to the public-house where he gets his jobs.”

An infirm woman, approaching fifty years of age, who spoke in a tone of sorrowful resignation, said,—“We have had very little money coming in of late. My husband has been very bad for ten weeks back. He throws up blood; I suppose he has strained himself too much. All the money I have had for six weeks to keep us both has been 8s. If he was earning money he would bring it to me.”

Another woman, “Not without the publican’s allowance, I am sure.”

The first woman, “No; the publican’s allowance would be taken off; but the publican, you see, must have a little—I do not know how much it is, but they must have something if they give us their jobs.”

This woman was here asked if her husband ever came home drunk?

“Yes,” she replied; “many a time he comes home drunk; but he must have the drink to get the jobs.”

A number of other women having made statements confirmatory of the above:—

“Do you think,” the meeting was asked, “your husbands would be sober as well as industrious men if they could be got away from the public-house system of employment and payment of wages?”

“God Almighty bless you!” exclaimed one woman, “they would love us and their families all the better for it! We should all be much the better for it.”

“And so say all of us!” was the next and perfectly unanimous exclamation.

“If we could see that day,” said one who had spoken before, “our families would have little to complain of.”

Another added, “The night-houses ought to be closed. That would be one good thing.”

Some inquiries were then made as to whether these poor women were ill-treated by their husbands when they came home in a state of intoxication. There was a good deal of hesitation before any answers could be obtained. At last one woman said, “her husband did certainly beat her, of course; but then,” she added, “he did not know what he was doing.”

“I,” said another, “should not know what it was to have an angry word with my husband if he was always sober. He is a quiet man—very, when the drink is out of him; but we have many words together when he is tipsy; and——” she stopped without completing the sentence.

Several others gave similar testimony; and many declared that it was the public-house system which led their husbands to drink.

One woman here said that the foremen of gangs, as well as the publican, helped to reduce the ballast-heaver’s earnings; for they gave work to men who took lodgings from them, though they did not occupy them.

This was confirmed by another woman, who spoke with great warmth upon the subject. She said that married men who could not afford to spend with the publican and lodge with the foremen in the manner pointed out, would be sure to have no work. Other men went straight from one job to another, while her own husband and other women’s husbands had been three or four weeks without lifting a shovelful of ballast. She considered this was very hard on men who had families.

A question was here asked, whether any women were present whose husbands, in order to obtain work, were obliged to pay for lodgings which they did not use?

One immediately rose and said, “They do it regularly at a publican’s in Wapping; and I know the men that have paid for them have had six jobs together, when my husband has had none for weeks.” “There are now,” added another, “fourteen at that very place who never lodge there, though they are paying for lodgings.”

They were next asked, who had suffered from want owing to their husbands drinking their earnings, as described at the public-houses in question?

“Starvation has been my lot,” said one. “And mine,” added another. “My children,” said a third, “have often gone to bed at night without breaking their fast the whole length of the day.” “And mine,” said one, “have many a time gone without a bit or sup of anything all the day, through their father working for the publican.”

“I cannot,” exclaimed the next, “afford my children a ha’porth of milk a-day.”

“Many a time,” said one, who appeared to be very much moved, “have I put my four children to bed, when the only meal they have had the whole day has been 1lb. of bread; but it’s of no use opening my mouth.”

“I,” said the last, “have been in London twenty-seven years, and during that time I can safely say I have never taken myself a single glass of spirits or anything else; but in that time I have suffered the martyrdom of forty years—all through my husband and the public-house. I have two children who bring me in, one of them 2s. 6d. and the other 6s. 6d. a-week, which is all we have, for my husband gets nearly nothing. If he could bring his earnings home, instead of spending them at a public-house, we should be very comfortable.”

These questions led to one concerning the late-hour system at the public-houses frequented by the ballast-heavers.

“I often go for my husband,” said one, “at one or two o’clock in the morning, after I know he has been paid; but they have kept him in a back apartment away from me, till I have threatened to smash the windows if they did not let him out. I threatened to smash the windows because my children were wanting the money for bread, which he was spending there. If our husbands were inclined to come home sober there is little chance, for they have cards and bagatelle to keep them till they become heady, and when they are become heady, there is nothing left for their families—then the publicans kick our poor men out, and lock the doors.”

This statement was confirmed, and after several other persons had described their feelings,—

The coal-whippers’ wives were asked whether or not their condition and that of their families had been improved since the system of carrying on the trade had been altered by the Legislature?

The answer was a most decisive affirmative. Their husbands, they said, used to spend all, or very nearly all, their earnings with the publicans; but now, when they got a good ship, they brought home the greatest part of their earnings, which was sufficient to make their families comfortable. Their husbands had become quite different men. They used to ill-treat them when they were paid at a public-house—very much so, because of the drink; but now they were very much altered, because they were become sober men to what they were. None were now distressed to provide for their families, and if there was plenty of work they would be quite happy. The improvement, one woman said, must be very great, otherwise there would not be so many institutions and benefit societies, pension societies, and schools for their children.

This declaration was very warmly applauded by the wives of the ballast-heavers. They declared that similar measures would produce similar benefits in their case, and they hoped the day would soon come when they should be secure in the enjoyment of them.

So terminated the proceedings.

Lumpers. — NUMBER OF SHIPS WOOD-LADEN DISCHARGED AT THE DIFFERENT DOCKS IN 1849. — TIMBER-DOCK LABOURERS. — THE NUMBER OF CARGOES OF TIMBER, DEALS, AND BATTENS, IMPORTED INTO LONDON IN THE FOLLOWING YEARS. — THE NUMBER OF WOOD-LADEN SHIPS WHICH ENTERED THE DIFFERENT DOCKS UNDERMENTIONED IN THE FOLLOWING YEARS. — The Timber and Deal Trade. — Account of the Casual Labourers.