Part 3 (1/2)

And here concerts exist where, over their beer, the listeners are regaled with the sentimental and comic songs of a generation long gathered to its fathers. To me I confess there is somewhat of pathos in these places.

What tales cannot that ancient landlord tell! The young, the beautiful, the brave he has outlived, where are they?

But let us pa.s.s on to the penny theatre, a place not hard to find in this region of sh.e.l.l-fish and fruit-pie shops, those sure indications of a neighbourhood rather poor and very wild. We pay our money at the door, and then follow the direction given us by the businesslike young woman who takes the fee, ”First turn to the left, and then to the right.” But instead of being allowed to enter at once, we have to wait with several others, chiefly boys, very dirty, who regard us apparently with no very favourable eye, till a fresh house is formed. Our new acquaintances are not talkative, and we are not sorry when our turn comes to enter the dirty hole set apart for the entertainment of the Sh.o.r.editch youth. We climb up a primitive staircase, and find ourselves in a gallery of the rudest description, a privilege for which we have to pay a penny extra.

Here we have an ample view of the stage and the pit, the latter chiefly filled with boys, very dirty, and full of fun, with the usual proportion of mothers with excited babies. The performance commences with a panorama of American scenery, with some very stale American criticisms, about the man who was so tall that he had to go up a ladder to shave himself, and so on; all, however, exciting much mirth amongst the youthful and apple-eating audience. Then a young lady, with very short petticoats and very thick ancles, dances, and takes all hearts by storm.

To her succeeds one who sings about true love, but not in a manner which the Sh.o.r.editch youthdom affects. Then a fool comes upon the stage, and keeps the pit in a roar, especially when he directs his wit to the three musicians who form the orchestra, and says ironically to one of them, ”You could not drink a quartern of gin, could you?” and the way in which the allusion was received evidently implied that the enlightened but juvenile audience around me evidently had a very low opinion of a man who could not toss off his quartern of gin. Then we had the everlasting n.i.g.g.e.rs, with the bones, and curiously-wrought long coats, and doubtful dialect, and perpetual laughter, which the excited pit copiously rewarded. One boy tossed a b.u.t.ton on the stage, another a copper, and another an apple; and so pleasing was this liberality to the supposed young men of African descent, that they did not think it beneath them, or inconsistent with their dignity as professionals, to encourage it in every possible way. And well they might. Those gay blacks very likely had little white faces at home dependent on the liberality of the house for next day's crust. But the treat of the evening was a screaming farce, in one act, in which the old tale of ”Taming the Shrew” was set forth in the most approved Sh.o.r.editch fas.h.i.+on. A husband comes upon the stage, whose wife-I would not be ungallant, but conscientious regard to truth compels me sorrowfully to declare-is an unmitigated shrew. She lords it over her husband as no good woman ever did or wishes to do. The poor man obeys till he can stand it no longer. At length all his manhood is aroused. Armed with what he calls a persuader-a cudgel of most formidable pretensions-he astonishes his wife with his unexpected resistance. She tries to regain the mastery, but in vain; and great is the delight of all as the husband, holding his formidable instrument over his cowed and trembling wife, compels her to obey his every word. All the unwashed little urchins around me were furious with delight. There was no need for the husband to tell the audience, as he did, as the moral of the piece, that the best remedy for a bad wife was to get such another cudgel for her as that he held in his hand. It was quite clear the little Britons around me had resolved how they would act; and I fear, as they pa.s.sed out to the number of about 200, few of them did not resolve, as soon as they had the chance, to drink their quartern of gin and to whop their wives.

On another occasion it chanced to me to visit a penny gaff in that dark and dolorous region, the New Cut. There the company and the entertainment were of a much lower character. A great part of the proceedings were indecent and disgusting, yet very satisfactory to the half-grown girls and boys present. In the time of the earlier Georges we read much of the brutality of the lower orders. If we may believe contemporary writers on men and manners, never was the theatre so full-never was the audience so excited-never did the sc.u.m and refuse of the streets so liberally patronise the entertainment as when deeds of violence and blood were the order of the night. This old savage spirit is dying out, but in the New Cut I fear it has not given way to a better one.

RAG FAIR.

People often ask, how do the poor live in London. This a question I don't intend answering on the present occasion. But if you ask how they clothe themselves, my answer is, at Rag Fair. Do my readers remember d.i.c.kens's sketch of Field-lane? In ”Oliver Twist,” he writes, ”Near to the spot at which Snow-hill and Holborn meet there opens, on the right hand as you come out of the city, a dark and dismal alley, leading to Saffron-hill. In its filthy shops are exposed for sale huge bunches of pocket handkerchiefs of all sizes and patterns, for here reside the traders who purchase them from pickpockets; hundreds of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs outside the windows, or flaunting from the door-posts, and the shelves within are filled with them.

Confined as the limits of Field-lane are, it has its barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, and its fried fish warehouse. It is a commercial colony of itself-the emporium of petty larceny, visited at early morning and setting in of dusk by silent merchants, who traffic in dark back parlours, and go as strangely as they come. Here the clothes-man, the shoe vamper, and the rag merchant display their goods as signboards to the petty thief, and stores of old iron and bones, and heaps of mildewy fragments of woollen, stuff, and linen rust and rot in the grimy cellars.” Expand this picture. Instead of one street have several-make it the resort of all the dealers in old clo', old iron, old rags, old tools, old bones, old anything that a human creature can sell or buy; fill it with a miscellaneous crowd of Jews, Irish, navvies, artisans, pickpockets, and thieves, bargaining with all the energy of which their natures are susceptible; make it damp and warm with their vapour, and a very Babel with their discordant sounds, and you get a dim idea of Rag Fair and its guests, unwashed as they appear every day from twelve to two, but especially on a Sunday, to the great scandal of the devout and respectable in that locality, who are too apt to quarrel with the effect and forget the cause.

Let us enter Houndsditch, a place where the Jews collected together long before the royal house of Guelph occupied its present pleasant position on the English throne. Poverty and wretchedness, it may be, are bashful at the West End, but they are not so here,

”Where no contiguous palace rears its head, To mark the meanness of their humble shed.”

In a little court on our left, a little way down, we come to a building known as the Old Clothes Exchange. The building was erected some dozen years ago by one of the leading merchants in the old clothes line. A small entrance fee is demanded. You had better pay, as otherwise admission will be denied you. You had better not attempt to pa.s.s in without paying, as the toll-collector is an ex-prize-fighter; and the chances are, in a set-to, you would come off second best. If it be Sunday you had better not, especially if the weather be warm, attempt a pa.s.sage at all. The scrambling, and wedging, and pus.h.i.+ng, and driving are dreadful. A man must have some nerve who forces his way in. In the week day, and you are a seller, you are soon pounced on by the Jews hungering and thirsting after bargains. In that peculiar dialect affected by the ancient people you have the most magnificent offers made.

”My coot friend, have you cot any preakage?” says one. ”Cot any old boots?” says another. ”I alvays gives a coot prishe,” says a third. And the seller is surrounded by an eager crowd, as if he had the Koh-i-noor, and was going to part with it dirt cheap. If you are a buyer, you are quite as quickly attacked. ”Want a new hat?” says one. ”Shall I sell you a coot coat?” says another; and whichever way you turn, you see the same buying and selling. The cheap jewellery, the china ornaments, the general wares, are not of the most _recherche_, but of the most popular character. You may buy a stock close by that will set up all the fairs in England. Here a seller of crockery ware has come back, and is disposing of the treasures he has acquired in the course of his travels.

There a woman is discharging a similar miscellaneous cargo. All round are buyers, examining their goods. Everything here will be made useful.

That bit of old iron will become new; those boots, ruined, as you deemed them, will be vamped up, and shall dance merrily to accompanying s.h.i.+llalaghs at Donnybrook fair; that resplendent vest, once the delight of Belgravia, in a few weeks will adorn Quas.h.i.+e as he serenades his Mary Blane beneath West Indian moons. Even those bits of waste leather will be carefully treasured up and converted into a dye that may tint the rich man's costly robe. Now, you need not wonder why you find suspicious-looking men and women bargaining with your servants for left-off clothes, or rags, or plunder of any kind, and you are not surprised when you hear even out of this dirty trade riches are made, and the gains are great.

A wit was once asked what he thought of Ireland. ”Why,” was his answer, ”I never knew before what the people of England did with their cast-off clothes.” A similar remark might be made with regard to Rag Fair. But we have not yet described the locality. Very dark and very dismal, but very much inclined to do business, the Exchange, as it is termed, is not a building of a very gorgeous style of architecture. In its erection the useful and the economical evidently was considered more than the beautiful. It seems dest.i.tute alike of shape and substance. Mr. Mayhew says it consists of a plot of ground about an acre in extent; but Mr.

Mayhew has certainly fallen into error here. The place is scarcely fenced in; and here and there you come to a h.o.a.rding, in the inside of which are some stalls and benches, scarce covered from the rain-others not so. Some of these benches, all looking very dirty and greasy, are ranged back to back, and here sit the sellers of old clothes, with their unsightly and unsavoury store of garments strewn or piled on the ground at their feet, while between the rows of petty dealers pa.s.s the merchant buyers on the look-out for bargains, or the workman, equally inclined to get as much as possible for his penny. But the curious spectator must not stop here. Near is the ”City Clothes Emporium,” and all the streets and alleys in the neighbourhood are similarly occupied. The place has the appearance of a foreign colony. They are not Saxon names you see, nor Saxon eyes that look wistfully at you, nor Saxon dialects you hear, but Hebrew. Every street around is part and parcel of the fair, the bazaar is but one section of the immense market which is here carried on; but let the anxious inquirer not be too curious or too lost in wonder, else some prying hand may be inserted into his pocket, and the loss of a handkerchief, or even of something else more valuable, may be the result of a visit to Rag Fair, a place unparalleled in this vast city for rags, and dirt, and seeming wretchedness. It is true that part of the nuisance is done away with. The police keep a close look-out on a Sunday, and a great portion of the traffic on that day is very properly stopped. But there are greater nuisances in the neighbourhood on the Sabbath which the police do not look after, but which they might.

THE COMMERCIAL ROAD AND THE COAL-WHIPPERS.

The Commercial Road, ab.u.t.ting on the Docks and Whitechapel, is the residence of the London coal whippers-a race of men singularly unfortunate-the complete slaves of the publicans of that quarter, and deserving universal sympathy. I have been down in their wretched homes; I have seen father, mother, children all sleeping, eating, living in one small apartment, ill-ventilated, inconvenient, and unhealthy; and I believe no cla.s.s of labourers in this great metropolis, where so many thousands are ill-paid and hard-worked, and are reduced almost to the condition of brutes, suffer more than the coal-whippers you meet in that busy street of traffic and toil-the Commercial Road.

The coal-whippers are men employed to _whip_ the coals out of the colliers into the barges, which latter bring them up for the supply of the inhabitants of London. Theirs is a precarious and laborious life, and therefore they have special claims upon the consideration of the public. Mr. Deering tells us ”it may possibly serve to bespeak interest in the subject if it be known that it is one which affects for weal or for woe no fewer than 10,000 persons, there being nearly 2,000 coal-whippers, together with their wives and families.” From the opening of the coal-whippers' office in 1843 to the close of 1850, the quant.i.ty of coals delivered through it was 16,864,613 tons, and the amount of wages paid to the men during that time was 589,180 11s. 5d. At times these men have to wait long without employment, sometimes a s.h.i.+p only breaks bulk, and a small quant.i.ty of coal is taken out, sometimes the whole cargo is worked right out. Thus the men's remuneration varies. In some cases a coal-whipper earns but 8s. 9d. a week, and in none more than 16s. Let us now speak of the work. As we have already intimated, that is very hard. It is carried on by gangs of nine, four work in the hold of the s.h.i.+p and fill the basket, four work on the ways, and whip the coal-that is, raise the basket to the top-and one, the basket man, turns it into the meter's box. The four on the whip have very hard work, and after twelve or fourteen tons have been raised go down into the hold, where they are choked with coal dust, but have not quite so difficult a task. Men who are employed in this labour describe it as most laborious and irksome. Nor from their description can we well conceive it to be otherwise.

Under the old system these men got all their work through the public-house. That was a fearful system. We have heard coal-whippers speak of it as ”slavery, tyranny, and degradation;” and well they might.

”The only coves who got the work,” as one man told us, ”were the Lus.h.i.+ngtons.” If a man did not spend his money at the public-house he got no employment; and actually we heard in one case of a _landlady_ who turned off a gang in the middle of their work because they would not spend so much money in her public-house as she thought desirable. One publican who had several of these gangs under his thumb, by various exactions, we were positively a.s.sured, made as much as 35 per week by them. The publicans, says Mr. Deering, the able and intelligent secretary to the commissioners, compelled every man to pay on an average to the amount of eight s.h.i.+llings, and in some instances ten s.h.i.+llings, per week for liquor on sh.o.r.e and on board, whether drunk by him or not.

The plan was to compel the coal-whippers to visit their houses previous to obtaining employment, and on the night before obtaining a s.h.i.+p to commence the score, and at six o'clock in the morning, before going to work, to drink a pot of beer, or spirits to an equal amount of value; then to take on board for each gang nine pots of beer, to be repeated on delivering every forty-nine tons during the day; after which they were compelled to pay nine or ten s.h.i.+llings per man for each s.h.i.+p for gear.

The evil effects of such a system it is unnecessary to point out. After a week's hard work, a man had nothing to take home. The coal-whippers became a drunken and degraded cla.s.s, the family were starved, the boys early learned to thieve, and the girls were too often thrown upon the streets. No wonder the men rebelled against this cruel tyranny. For long they bore it, but at length they plucked up courage, and demanded deliverance.

Generation after generation had struggled for their rights, and numerous Acts were pa.s.sed to redress their grievances; but no sooner was an Act pa.s.sed than ways and means were found to evade it. Then four brave men, Robert Newell, Henry Barthorpe, George Applegate, and Daniel Brown, created amongst their oppressed fellow-labourers an excitement which never subsided till the Corporation of London took their case in hand.

Lieutenant Arnold, with a view to benefit them, established an office, but the publicans combined against him and drove him out of the field.

The London Corporation appointed a committee to examine into the whole matter. Government was besieged, but Mr. Labouchere told the coal-whippers that they could not interfere, ”as it would be too great an interference with the rights of labour.” The coal-whippers, however, were not to be daunted, and after years of unremitting toil, in which their claims had become increasingly appreciated, Mr. Gladstone prevailed upon the House of Commons to pa.s.s the Act which on the 22nd of August, 1843, received the royal a.s.sent. The Act simply provided that an office should be established where the coal-whippers should a.s.semble, and that owners and captains of vessels discharging their cargoes by hired men and by the process of whipping should make to them the first offer to discharge their cargoes. It in no way interfered with or attempted to fix the price of the labour. This was left as a matter of contract between employers and employed. As there were conflicting interests to be consulted, the bill provided that the proposed office should be placed under the management of nine commissioners, four of whom should be appointed by the Board of Trade, and four by the Corporation of the City of London, the chairman to be the chairman for the time being of the s.h.i.+powners' Society of London. To show how the Act has worked, we make the following extract from an appeal to the House of Commons by the Committee of the Registered Coal-whippers in the Port of London, published in May of the present year, and which bears the names of John Farrow, John Doyle, William Brown, Michael Barry, John Cronin. They say:-”The object contemplated by the Legislature in the establishment of the office was to secure to the men the full amount of their earnings _immediately_ after their labour was completed, with the exception of one farthing in the s.h.i.+lling, which is required to be left in the office to defray necessary expenses. At first the office was fiercely opposed by interested parties, because it broke up a system of vile, degrading, and unjust extortion, by which these men derived their profits; but this opposition soon subsided, the price of labour became equalised by an understanding between the employers and the employed, the former being at liberty to offer any price they were willing to give, and the latter to accept or refuse as they thought proper; and the only compulsory clause in the Act, in favour of the coal-whippers, is that, an office being established at which they a.s.semble for the purpose of being hired, the s.h.i.+powners _shall first make an offer to the coal-whippers_ registered at the office, and if refused by them at the price offered, a discharge is given, empowering the captains to obtain any other labourers elsewhere, at not a greater price than that offered to the registered men. The good effects resulting from the establishment of the office are-relief to the men from extortion and a demoralising system, ruinous alike to both body and soul-a fair turn of work in rotation-immediate payment of their wages in money-and an opportunity of disposing of their labour (if any is to be had elsewhere) in the interim of their clearing one s.h.i.+p and obtaining another. The advantage to the trade has been the regularity and certainty with which they obtain their coals from on board s.h.i.+p, instead of the injurious delay which occurred before the office was established, while the men (goaded by oppression) and the captains were contending about the price of the labour; and the advantage to the s.h.i.+powner has been-the prevention of delay in the delivery of his cargoes-by always finding a sufficient number of men in attendance at the office, for the delivery of the s.h.i.+ps-steadiness in the price of labour, and avoidance of detention through 'strikes' for higher wages, _and on the whole_, _a lower price for labour than prevailed before the office was established_.

In some years, nearly 100,000 has pa.s.sed through the office for wages earned, but of late that amount has been greatly reduced in consequence of the introduction of machinery in docks and other places; the decrease in importation coastwise; the employment of '_bona fide_' servants by some gas companies, and by a few coal merchants; and _by frequent evasions of the Act through the interference of persons who have nothing whatever to do with the payment of wages_, _and who derive pecuniary advantage to themselves by so doing_. The retention of the word 'purchaser' in the Act gives them power to do this.”