London Labour and the London Poor Read Online

One is RICHARD KNIGHT (‘late of the City Mission’) and the other HENRY WOOD (‘who may be considered as one of its authors’).

NOTE ON THE TEXT

Mayhew’s text presents no difficulties. I have used the 1865 four-volume impression published by Charles Griffin & Co., Stationers’ Hall Court, from which illustrations used here are also taken. The extracts are grouped according to volume, and the page reference to the 1865 edition is given for each. A few new headings have been introduced and a few of Mayhew’s headings re-positioned in order to lend coherence to the selections presented here.

Money

I have not attempted to ‘translate’ the old-style cash values in Mayhew’s text. The following is a guide to their conversion into modern terms.

£1 and 1 shilling (£1 1s.) made 1 guinea.

10 shillings and 6 pence (10s. 6d.) made half a guinea.

The following coins were also in use:

He went along the Strand, over the crossing under the statue of Charles on horseback, and up Pall Mall East till he came to the opening into the park under the Duke of York’s column. The London night world was alive as he made his way. From the Opera Colonnade shrill voices shrieked at him as he passed, and drunken men coming down from the night supper-houses in the Haymarket saluted him with affectionate cordiality. The hoarse waterman from the cabstand, whose voice had perished in the night air, croaked out at him the offer of a vehicle; and one of the night beggar-women who cling like burrs to those who roam the street at these unhallowed hours still stuck to him, as she had done ever since he had entered the Strand.

Anthony Trollope, The Three Clerks (1858)

Three o’clock, and half-past three, and they had passed over London Bridge. They had heard the rush of the tide against obstacles; and looked down, awed, through the dark vapour on the river; had seen little spots of lighted water where the bridge lamps were reflected, shining like demon eyes, with a terrible fascination in them for guilt and misery. They had shrunk past homeless people, lying coiled up in nooks. They had run from drunkards. They had started from slinking men, whistling and signing to one another at bye corners, or running away at full speed. Though everywhere the leader and the guide Little Dorrit, happy for once in her youthful appearance, feigned to cling to and rely upon Maggy. And more than once some voice, from among a knot of brawling or prowling figures in their path, had called out to the rest to ‘let the woman and the child go by!’

Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit (1857)

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR

VOLUME ONE

OF THE LONDON STREET-FOLK

[pp. 5–6] Those who obtain their living in the streets of the metropolis are a very large and varied class; indeed, the means resorted to in order ‘to pick up a crust’, as the people call it, in the public thoroughfares (and such in many instances it literally is), are so multifarious that the mind is long baffled in its attempts to reduce them to scientific order or classification.

It would appear, however, that the street-people may be all arranged under six distinct genera or kinds.

These are severally:

I. Street-sellers

II. Street-buyers

III. Street-finders

IV. Street-performers, artists, and showmen

V. Street-artizans, or working pedlars

VI. Street-labourers

The first of these divisions – the STREET-SELLERS – includes many varieties; viz. –

1. The street-sellers of fish, &c. – ‘wet’, ‘dry’, and shell-fish – and poultry, game, and cheese.

2. The street-sellers of vegetables, fruit (both ‘green’ and ‘dry’), flowers, trees, shrubs, seeds, and roots, and ‘green stuff’ (as watercresses, chickweed and grun’sel, and turf).

3. The street-sellers of eatables and drinkables, – including the vendors of fried fish, hot eels, pickled whelks, sheep’s trotters, ham sandwiches, peas’-soup, hot green peas, penny pies, plum ‘duff’, meat-puddings, baked potatoes, spice-cakes, muffins and crumpets, Chelsea buns, sweetmeats, brandy-balls, cough drops, and cat and dog’s meat – such constituting the principal eatables sold in the street; while under the head of street-drinkables may be specified tea and coffee, ginger-beer, lemonade, hot wine, new milk from the cow, asses milk, curds and whey, and occasionally water.

4. The street-sellers of stationery, literature, and the fine arts – among whom are comprised the flying stationers, or standing and running patterers; the long-song-sellers; the wall-song-sellers (or ‘pinners-up’, as they are technically termed); the ballad sellers; the vendors of playbills, second editions of newspapers, back numbers of periodicals and old books, almanacks, pocket books, memorandum books, note paper, sealing-wax, pens, pencils, stenographic cards, valentines, engravings, manuscript music, images, and gelatine poetry cards.

5. The street-sellers of manufactured articles, which class comprises a large number of individuals, as (a) the vendors of chemical articles of manufacture – viz., blacking, lucifers, corn-salves, grease-removing compositions, plating-balls, poison for rats, crackers, detonating-balls, and cigar-lights, (b) The vendors of metal articles of manufacture – razors and pen-knives, tea-trays, dog-collars, and key-rings, hardware, bird-cages, small coins, medals, jewellery, tin-ware, tools, card-counters, red-herring-toasters, trivets, gridirons, and Dutch ovens, (c) The vendors of china and stone articles of manufacture – as cups and saucers, jugs, vases, chimney ornaments, and stone fruit, (d) The vendors of linen, cotton, and silken articles of manufacture – as sheeting, table-covers, cotton, tapes and thread, boot and stay-laces, haberdashery, pretended smuggled goods, shirt-buttons, etc., etc.; and (e) the vendors of miscellaneous articles of manufacture – as cigars, pipes, and snuff-boxes, spectacles, combs, ‘lots’, rhubarb, sponges, wash-leather, paper-hangings, dolls, Bristol toys, sawdust, and pin-cushions.

6.