menu_book Chapter 43

section forty three of london labour and the london poor vol i by henry mayhew this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by gillian henry statement of a regular scavenger the following statement of his business his sentiments and indeed of the subjects which concerned him or about which he was questioned was given to me by a street sweeper so he called himself for i have found some of these men not to relish the appellation of scavenger. He was a short, sturdy, somewhat red-faced man, without anything particular in his appearance to distinguish him from the mass of mere labourers, but with the sodden and sometimes dogged look of a man contented in his ignorance, and, for it is not a very uncommon case, rather

proud of it. I don't know how old I am, he said. I have observed, by the by, that there is not any excessive vulgarity in these men's tones or accent, so much as grossness in some of their expressions. And I can't see what that concerns anyone, as I's old enough to have a jolly rough beard, and so can take care of myself. I should think so. My father was a sweeper, and I wanted to be a waterman. But father, he hasn't been dead long, didn't like the thoughts on it, and he said

they was all drowned one time or another. So I ran away and tried my hand as a jack in the water, But I was starved back in a week and got a H blank of a clouting. After that, I sifted a bit in the dust yard and helped in any way, and I was sent to help at and learn honeypot and other pot making at Deptford. But honeypots was a great thing in the business.

Master's foreman married a relation of mine some way or other. I never tasted honey, but I've heard it's like sugar and butter mixed. The pots was often wanted to look like foreign pots. I don't know nothing what was meant by it. Some B-blank dodge or other.

No, the trade didn't suit me at all, master, so I left. I don't know why it didn't suit me, because it didn't. Just then, father had hurt his hand and arm in a jam again a cart, and so, as I was a big lad, I got to take his place, and gave every satisfaction to Mr. blank.

Yes, he was a contractor, and a great man. I can't say as I knows how contracting's done, but it's a bargain between man and man. So I got on. I'm now looked on as a stunning good workman, I can tell you. Well, I can't say as I think sweeping the streets is hard work. I'd rather sweep two hours than shovel one. It tires one's arms and back so to go on shoveling.

You can't change, you see, sir, and the same parts keep getting gripped more and more. Then you must mind your eye, if you're shoveling slop into a cart, particular so. Or some feller may run off with a complaint that he's been splashed a purpose. Is a man ever splashed a purpose? No, sir, not as I nose on.

In course not. Note, laughing, end note. Why should he? The streets must be done as they're done now. It always was so, and will always be so.

Did I ever hear what London streets were like a thousand years ago? It's nothing to me, but they must have been like what they is now. Yes, there was always streets. and how was people that has tin to get their coals taken to them, and how was the public houses to get their beer?

It's talking nonsense talking that way, asking such questions. Note, as the scavenger seemed likely to lose his temper, I changed the subject of conversation. End note. Yes, he continued, I have good health.

I never had a doctor but twice. Once was for a hurt, and the tether I won't tell on. Well, I think night works healthful enough, but I'll not say so much for it, as you may hear some of them say. I don't like it, but I do it when I's obligated under a necessity.

It pays one as overwork, and wary like more one's in it, more one may be suited. I reckon no man works harder nor such as me. Oh, as to poor journeymen tailors and such like, I knows they're stunning badly off, and many of their masters is the hardest of beggars. I have a nephew as works for a juslop, but I don't reckon that work.

Anybody might do it. You think not, sir? Very well. It's all the same. No, I won't say as I could make a viscuit, but I've sewed my own buttons onto one afore now.

Yes, I've heard on the Board of Health. They've put down some night charts, and if they goes on putting down more, what's to become of the night soil? I can't think what they're up to, but if they don't touch wages, it may be all right in the end, innit? I don't know but them their concerns does touch wages, but one's naturally afeard in them. I could read a little when I was a child, but I can't now for want of practice, or I might know more about it.

I earns my money gallows hard, and requires support to do hard work, and if wages goes down, one's strength goes down. I'm a man as understands what things belongs. I was once out of work, through a mistake, for a good many weeks, perhaps five or six or more. I learned then what short grub meant. I got a drop of beer and a crust sometimes with men as I knowed,

or I might have dropped in the street. What did I do to pass my time while I was out of work? Certainly the days seemed very long, but I went about and called at Dust Yards till I didn't like to go too often. And I met men I knowed at tap rooms,

and spent time that way, and asked if there was any openings for work. I'd been out of choler odd weeks now and then, but when this happened, I'd been on slack work a goodish bit, and was bad for rent three weeks and more. My rent was two shillings a week then. It's one shilling nine pence now, and my own traps. No, I can't say I was sorry when I was forced to be idle that way,

that I hadn't kept up my reading, nor tried to keep it up, because I couldn't then have settled down my mind to read. I know I couldn't. I likes to hear the paper read well enough, if I's resting. but old Bill as often volunteers to read as to spell the hard words

so that one can't tell what the devil he's reading about. I never hears anything about books. I never heard of Robinson Crusoe if it wasn't once at the WIC. Note, Victoria Theatre, end note.

I think there was some such a name there. He lived on a deserted island, did he, sir, all by himself? Well, I think now you mentions it, I have heard on him. But one needn't believe all one hears, whether out of books or not.

I don't know much good that ever anybody as I know's ever got out of books. They're fittest for idle people. Certainly I've seen working people reading in coffee shops, but they might as well be resting themselves to keep up their strength. Do I think so? I'm sure on it, master.

I sometimes spends a few browns, a-going to the play, mostly about Christmas. It's very fine and grand at the wick, that's the place I goes to most. Both the pantomimers and t'other things is very stunning. I can't say how much I spends a year in plays. I keeps no account, perhaps five shillings or so in a year,

including expenses such as beer, when one goes out after a stopper on the stage. I don't keeps no accounts of what I gets or what I spends. It would be no use. Money comes and it goes,

and it often goes a damned sight faster than it comes. So it seems to me, though I ain't in debt just at this time. I never goes to any church or chapel. Sometimes I hasn't clothes as is fit,

and I suppose I couldn't be admitted into such fine places in my working dress. I was once in a church, but felt queer, as one does in them strange places, and never went again. They're fittest for rich people. Yes, I've heard about religion and about God Almighty.

What religion have I here done? Why, the regular religion. I'm satisfied with what I knows and feels about it, and that's enough about it. I came to tell you about trade and work because Mr. blank told me it might do good, but religion hasn't nothing to do with it. Yes, Mr. Blanks, a good master and a religious man,

but I've known masters as didn't care a damn for religion as good as him. And so you see, it comes to much the same thing. I cares nothing about politics neither, but I'm a chartist. I'm not a married man. I was a-going to be married to a young woman as lived with me a goodish bit as my housekeeper. Note, this he said very demurely. End note. But she went to the hopping to yarn a few shillings for herself and never came back. I heard that she'd taken up with

an Irish hawker, but I can't say as to the rights on it. Did I fret about her? Perhaps not, but I was wexed. I'm sure I can't say what I spends my wages on. I sometimes makes 12 shillings sixpence a week and sometimes better than 21 shillings with night work. I suppose grub costs a shilling a day and beer sixpence, but I keeps no accounts. I buy ready-cooked meat, often cold-biled beef, and eats it at any taproom. I have meat every day, mostly more than once a day.

Vegetables I don't care about, only inghuns and cabbage, if you can get it smoking hot, with plenty of pepper. The rest of my tin goes for rent and baccy and togs, and a little drop of gin now and then. The statement I have given is sufficiently explicit of the general opinions of the regular scavengers, concerning literature, politics, and religion. On these subjects, the great majority of the regular scavengers have no opinion at all,

or opinions distorted, even when the facts seem clear and obvious, by ignorance, often united with its nearest of kin, prejudice, and suspiciousness. I am inclined to think, however, that the man whose narrative I noted down was more dogged in his ignorance than the body of his fellows. All the intelligent men with whom I conversed, and whose avocations had made them familiar for years with this class, concurred in representing them as grossly ignorant.

This description of the scavenger's ignorance, and so on, it must be remembered, applies only to the regular hands. Those who have joined the ranks of the street sweepers from other callings are more intelligent and sometimes more temperate. The system of concubinage, with a great degree of fidelity in the couple living together without the sanction of the law, such as I have described as prevalent among the costermongers and dustmen, is also prevalent among the regular scavengers.

I did not hear of habitual unkindness from the parents to the children born out of wedlock, but there is habitual neglect of all or much which a child should be taught, a neglect growing out of ignorance. I heard of two scavengers with large families of whom the treatment was sometimes very harsh, and at others mere petting. Education, or rather the ability to read and write, is not common among the adults in this calling, so that it cannot be expected to be

found among their children. Some labouring men, ignorant themselves, but not perhaps constituting a class or a clique, like the regular scavengers, try hard to procure for their children the knowledge, the want of which they usually think has barred their own progress in life. Other ignorant men, mixing only with their own sort, as is generally the case with the regular scavengers, and in the several branches of the business, often think and say that

what they did without, their children could do without also. I even heard it said by one scavenger that it wasn't right a child should ever think himself wiser than his father. A man who knew, in the way of his business as a private contractor for night work and so on, a great many regular scavengers, ran them over and came to the conclusion that about four or five out of twenty could read, ill or tolerably well,

and about three out of forty could write. He told me, moreover, that one of the most intelligent fellows generally whom he knew among them, a man whom he had heard read well enough, and always understood to be a tolerable writer, the other day brought a letter from his son, a soldier abroad with his regiment in Lower Canada, and requested my informant to read it to him as that kind of writing,

although plain enough, was beyond him. The son in writing had availed himself of the superior skill of a corporal in his company, so that the letter on family matters and feelings was written by deputy and read by deputy. The costumongers I have shown, when themselves unable to read, have evinced a fondness for listening to exciting stories of courts and aristocracies,

and have even bought penny periodicals to have their contents read to them. The scavengers appear to have no taste for this mode of enjoying themselves, but then their leisure is far more circumscribed than that of the costermongers. It must be borne in mind that I have all along spoken of the regular, many of them hereditary, scavengers, employed by the more liberal contractors.

There are yet accounts of habitations, statements of wages and so on and so on, to be given in connection with men working for the honourable masters, before proceeding to the scurf traders. The working scavengers usually reside in the neighbourhood of the dust yards, occupying second-floor backs, kitchens, where the entire house is sublet,

a system often fraught with great extortion, or garrets. They usually, and perhaps always when married, or what they consider as good, have their own furniture. The rent runs from 1.06 to 2.00 threepence weekly, an average being one shilling nine pence or one shilling ten pence.

One room which I was in was but barely furnished, a sort of dresser serving also for a table, a chest, three chairs, one almost bottomless, an old turn-up bedstead, a Dutch clock with the minute hand broken,

or as the scavenger very well called it when he saw me looking at it, a stump, an old corner cupboard, and some pots and domestic utensils in a closet without a door, but retaining a portion of the hinges on which the door had swung. The rent was one shilling tenpence, with a frequent intimation that it ought to be two shillings. The place was clean enough, and the scavenger seemed proud of

it, assuring me that his old woman, wife or concubine, was a good sort and kept things as nice as ever she could, washing everything herself, where other old women lushed. The only ornaments in the room were three profiles of children, cut in black paper and pasted upon white card, tacked to the wall over the fireplace, for mantel-shelf there was none, while one of the three profiles, that of the eldest child, then dead, was framed with a glass and a sort of bronze

or cast frame, costing, I was told, 15 pence. This was the apartment of a man in regular employ, with but a few exceptions. Another scavenger with whom I had some conversation about his labours as a nightman, for he was both, gave me a full account of his own diet, which I find to be sufficiently specific as to that of his class generally, but only of the regular hands. The diet of the regular working scavenger, or nightman, seems generally to differ from that of mechanics, or perhaps of other working men, in the respect of his being fonder of salt and strong-flavoured food.

I have before made the same remark concerning the diet of the poor generally. I do not mean, however, that the scavengers are fond of such animal food as is called high, for I did not hear that nightmen or scavengers were more tolerant of what approached putridity than other labouring men, and despite their calling, might sicken at the rankness of some haunches of venison. But they have a great relish for highly salted cold-boiled beef, bacon, or pork,

with a saucer full of red pickled cabbage, or dingy-looking pickled onions, or one or two big strong raw onions, of which most of them seem as fond as Spaniards of garlic. This sort of meat, sometimes profusely mustarded, is often eaten in the beer shops with thick shives of bread, cut into big mouthfuls with a clasp pocket knife, while vegetables, unless indeed the beer shop can supply a plate of smoking hot potatoes, are uncared for. The drink is usually beer. The same

style of eating and the same kind of food characterise the scavenger and nightman, while taking his meal at home with his wife or family. But so irregular, and often of necessity, are these men's hours, that they may be said to have no homes, merely places to sleep or doze in. A working scavenger and nightman calculated for me his expenses in eating and drinking, and other necessaries, for the previous week. He had earned fifteen shillings, but one shilling

of this went to pay off an advance of five shillings, made to him by the keeper of a beer shop, or as he called it, a jerry. Rent of an unfurnished room. Weekly, one shilling nine pence. Washing, average. Weekly, threepence. Note, the man himself washed the dress in which he worked, and generally washed his own stockings. Shaving, when twice a week. Weekly, a penny. Tobacco, Daily a penny, weekly seven pence.

Note, short pipes are given to these men at the beer shops or public houses which they use. End note. Beer, daily four pence, weekly two shillings four pence. Note, he usually spent more than four pence a day in beer, he said. It was only a pot.

But this week more beer than usual had been given to him in night work. Gin, daily tuppence, weekly one shilling tuppence. Note the same with gin, end note. Four pence. Pickles or onions. Daily, a farthing. Weekly, a penny and three farthings. Butter, weekly, a penny. Soap, weekly, a penny. Total, weekly, thirteen shillings, tuppence and a farthing.

Perhaps this informant was excessive in his drink. I believe he was so. The others not drinking so much regularly. The odd nine pence he told me he paid to a snob, because he said he was going to send his half-boots to be mended. This man informed me he was a widder, having lost his old ooman, and he got all his meals at a beer or coffee shop. Sometimes, when he was a street sweeper by day and a nightman by night, he had earned 20 shillings to 22 shillings, and then he

could have his pound of salt meat a day for three meals, with a baked tater or so when they was in. I inquired as to the apparently low charge of sixpence per pound for cooked meat, but I found that the man had stated what was correct. In many parts, good boiled brisket, fresh cut, is sevenpence and eightpence per pound, with mustard into the bargain, and the cookshop keepers, not the eating-house people,

who sell boiled hams, beef and so on in retail, but not to be eaten on the premises, vend the hard remains of a brisket, and sometimes of a round, for sixpence or even less, also with mustard. And the scavengers like this better than any other food. In the brisk times, my informant sometimes had a hot cut from a shop on a Sunday, and a more liberal allowance of beer and gin. If he had any piece of clothing to buy, he always bought it at once, before his money went for other

things. These were his proceedings when business was brisk. In slacker times, his diet was on another footing. He then made his supper, or second meal, for tea he seldom touched, on faggots. This preparation of baked meats costs a penny hot, but it is seldom sold hot, except in the evening, and three farthings, or more frequently two for one pence-halfpenny, cold. It is a sort of cake, roll or ball, a number being baked at a time, and is made of chopped liver and lights, mixed with

gravy, and wrapped in pieces of pig's col. It weighs six ounces, so that it is unquestionably a cheap, and to the scavenger, a savoury meal. But to other nostrils its odour is not seductive. My informant regretted the capital faggots he used to get at a shop when he worked in Lambeth, superior to anything he had been able to meet with on the Middlesex side of the water. Or he dined off a savelloy, costing a penny and bread,

or bought a pennyworth of strong cheese and a farthing's worth of onions. He would further reduce his daily expenditure on cocoa, or sometimes coffee, to a penny, and his bread to three quarters of a loaf. He ate, however, in average times a quarter of a quartern loaf to his breakfast,

sometimes buying a halfpenny worth of butter, a quarter or more to his dinner, the same to his supper, and the other with an onion for a relish, to his beer. He was a great bread-eater, he said, but sometimes, if he slept in the daytime,

half a loaf would stand over to the next day. He was always hungriest when at work among the street mud or night soil, or when he had finished work. On my asking him if he meant that he partook of the meals he had described daily, he answered no, but that was mostly what he had.

And if he bought a bit of cold-boiled, or even roast pork, what offered cheap? The expense was about the same. When he was drinking, and he did make a break sometimes, he ate nothing, and wasn't inclined to,

and he seemed rather to plume himself on this as a point of economy. He had tasted fruit pies, but cared nothing for them, but liked four pennorth of a hot meat or giblet pie on a Sunday. Batter pudding he only liked if smoking hot, and it was uncommon improved, he said, with an ingin.

Rum he preferred to gin, only it was dearer, but most of the scavengers, he thought, liked old Tom gin best, but they was both good. Of the drinking of these men I heard a good deal, and there is no doubt that some of them taupe hard,

and by their conduct evins a sort of belief that the great end of labour is beer. But it must be borne in mind that if inquiries are made as to the man best adapted to give information concerning any rude calling, especially, some talkative member of the body of these working men, some pothouse hero who has persuaded himself and his ignorant mates

that he is an oracle, is put forward. As these men are sometimes, from being trained to, and long known in their callings, more prosperous than their fellows, their opinion seems ratified by their circumstances. But in such cases, or in the appearance of such cases, it has been my custom to make subsequent inquiries, or there might be frequent misleadings, where the statements

of these men taken as typical of the feelings and habits of the whole body. The statement of the working scavenger given under this head is unquestionably typical of the character of a portion of his co-workers, and more especially of what was, and in the sort of hereditary scavengers I have spoken of is, the character of the regular hands. There are now, however, many checks to prolonged indulgence in lush, as every man of the rudder street-sweeping class

will call it. The contractors must be served regularly. The most indulgent will not tolerate any unreasonable absence from work, so that the working scavengers, at the jeopardy of their means of living, must leave their caroes at an hour which will permit them to rise soon enough in the morning. The beer which these men imbibe, it should be also remembered, they regard as a proper part of their diet, in the same light indeed as they regard so much bread, and that

among them the opinion is almost universal that beer is necessary to keep up their strength. There are a few teetotalers belonging to the class. One man thought he knew five, and had heard of five others. I inquired of the landlord of a beer shop frequented by these men as to their petitions, but he wanted to make it appear that they took a half pint now and then when thirsty. He was evidently tender of the character of his customers. The landlord of a

public house also frequented by them informed me that he really could not say what they expended in beer, for labourers of all kinds used his tap, and as all tap-room liquor was paid for on delivery in his and all similar establishments, he did not know the quantity supplied to any particular class. He was satisfied these men as a whole drank less than they did at one time, though he had no doubt some, he seemed to know no distinctions between scavengers, dustmen and nightmen, spent a shilling

a day in drink. He knew one scavenger who was dozing about not long since, for nearly a week, sleepy drunk, and the belief was that he had found something. The absence of all accounts prevents my coming to anything definite on this head, but it seems positive that these men drink less than they did. The landlord in question thought the statement I have given as to diet and drink perfectly correct for a regular hand in good earnings i am assured however and it is my own opinion after long inquiry that one-third of their earnings is spent in drink end of section forty three