Part 4

He was once seen in a most perilous situation, when he lodged in a two-pair of stairs back room, in Wharton's Court, Holborn. He had placed himself on the window-sill, in order to clean the outside upper panes, and was attached as usual to his sledge, when unfortunately he broke a square. On this occasion he let loose the volley of oaths which at other times he can so forcibly discharge; nor did his rage subside after he had launched himself into the room again; indeed he was heard at intervals to vociferate in this way for several hours.

The very extraordinary torso etched in the next plate is that of John Mac Nally, of the county of Tyrone. This poor fellow lost the use of his legs by a log, that crushed both his thighs, when an apprentice at Cork.

His head, shoulders, and chest, which are exactly those of Hercules, would prove valuable models for the artist.

Mac, who is well known about Parliament Street, Whitehall, and the Surrey foot of Westminster Bridge, after scuttling along the streets for some time upon a sledge, discovered the power of novelty, and trained two dogs, Boxer and Rover, to draw him in a truck, by which contrivance he has increased his income beyond all belief.

Though this man's dogs when coupled have occasional snarlings, particularly when one scratches himself with an overstrained exertion, the other feeling at the same time an inclination to dose, yet, when their master has been dead drunk, and become literally a log on his truck, they have very cordially united their efforts to convey him to his lodgings in St Ann's Lane, Westminster, and perhaps with more safety than if he had governed them, frequently taking a circuitous route during street repairs in order to obtain the clearest path.

The figure in the box is that of a Jew mendicant, who has unfortunately lost the use of his legs, and is placed every morning in the above vehicle, so that he may be drawn about the neighbourhood of Petticoat Lane, and exhibited as an object of charity. His venerable appearance renders it impossible for a Jew or a Christian to pass without giving him alms, though he never begs but of his own people; a custom highly creditable to the Jews, and even more attentively observed by that truly honourable Society of Friends, vulgarly called Quakers, who neither suffer their poor to beg, nor become burthensome to any but themselves.

About forty-eight years ago, when the sites of Portland Place, Devonshire Street, &c., were fields, the famous Tommy Lowe, then a singer at Mary-le-bone Gardens, raised a subscription to enable an unfortunate man to run a small chariot, drawn by four muzzled mastiffs, from a pond near Portland Chapel--called Cockney Ladle, which supplied Mary-le-bone Basin with water--to the Farthing Pie-house, a building remaining at the end of Norton Street, and now the sign of the Green Man, in order to accommodate children with a ride for a halfpenny. And it is rather extraordinary, that the son of that very man, a few years since, and after the death of his wife, harnessed a spaniel to a small cart, but large enough to hold his infant, which the animal drew after the father from lamp to lamp through the very streets above mentioned. The dog became so accustomed to his task, that as soon as he heard his master cover a lamp, away he would scamper to the next, and there wait the arrival of the ladder.

Street-crossing sweepers next make their appearance; the first on the list being William Tomlins, whose stand is very productive, as it includes both Albemarle and St James Streets. Of this man there is nothing further remarkable, beyond his attention to his pitch, for so the beggars and ballad-singers call their stands. He appears to be alive to the receipt of every penny, and will not suffer himself by any means to be diverted from his solicitations; as a strong proof of which, he refused to hold the horse of a gentleman who called to him for that purpose, and from this it may be inferred that he thought begging a better occupation.

The next character portrayed is a constant sweeper of the crossing at the top of Ludgate Hill. This man finds it his interest to wear a cloth round his head, as he is on that account frequently noticed by elderly maiden city dames, who mistake him for one of their own sex.

The crossing from Charles Street to Rathbone Place is swept by Daniel Cropp, as filthy a looking fellow as any of his tribe. In order to render himself noticed, he literally combs his hair with his opened fingers. He at present differs from the etching, by wearing a fireman's jacket.

The next plate represents a lad who occasionally sweeps the crossing at the end of Princes Street, Hanover Square, and wears a large waistcoat, surmounted by a soldier's jacket.

At the time he was drawn, he was so sickly that his person was not recognised as a vender of matches, in which character he had two years before been selected as a subject for this work, and whose portrait as such is given in the following plate. The boy occasionally sings the old match song, and at certain hours finds it his interest to exercise his broom at the above station.

The subjects of the next two plates are unfortunate mendicants. The first is a silver-haired man, of the name of Lilly, who lost his leg in some repairs at Westminster. Poets' Corner, in the Abbey, is the place where he is mostly to be seen.

The second plate is the portrait of William Frasier, deprived of both his hands in the field of battle. His allowance as a maimed soldier not being sufficient to maintain his large family, he is obliged to depend on the benevolence of such of the public who purchase boot-laces of him. When this poor fellow's portrait was taken, he lodged in Market Lane, in the house formerly occupied by Torre, the print-seller, who was the original fireworker at Mary-le-bone Gardens.

London has of late been gradually losing many of its old street customs, particularly that pleasing one of the milkmaid's garland, so richly decorated with articles of silver and bunches of cowslips. The garland was of a pyramidal form, and placed upon a horse carried by two chairmen, adorned with ribbons and tulips. The plate consisted of pint mugs, quart tankards, and large dishes, sometimes to the value of five hundred pounds, hired of silversmiths for the purpose. The milkwoman and her pretty maids, in their Nancy Dawson petticoats, would dance to the fiddler's jigs of "Paddy O'Rafferty," or "Off she goes," before the doors of their customers; but now, instead of this innocent scene of May-day gaiety, the streets are infested by such fellows as the one exhibited in the adjoining plate, who have been dismissed, perhaps for their indecent conduct, from the public places of entertainment. These men hire old dresses, and join the Chimney Sweeper's, Cinder-sifter's, or Bunter's Garland, or Jack in the Green, &c., and exhibit all sorts of grimace and ribaldry to extort money from their numerous admirers.

Few persons, particularly those in elevated life, can witness, or even entertain a true idea of the various modes by which the lowest classes gain a livelihood. It is scarcely to be believed that some few years ago a woman, of the name of Smith, regularly went over London early in the morning, to strike out the teeth of dead dogs that had been stolen and killed for the sake of their skins. These teeth she sold to bookbinders, carvers, and gilders, as burnishing tools.

There are women who, on Sunday mornings when there are no carts about, frequent Thames Street, and the adjoining lanes inhabited by Lisbon merchants, to pick up from the kennels the refuse of lemons, after they have been squeezed for their juice. These they sell to the Jew distillers, who extract a further portion of liquor, and thus afford them the means of selling, at a considerably reduced price, lemon drops to the lower order of confectioners.

It is seldom that the common beggars eat the food given to them; and it is a well-known fact, that they sell their broken bread to the lowest order of the biscuit bakers, who grind it for the purpose of making "tops and bottoms," &c.

This was also the practice in former days, as appears in an old ballad, from which the following is an extract:--

THE BEGGAR'S WEDDING; OR, THE JOVIAL CREW. _Printed with allowance, October 19, 1676._

"Then Tom a Bedlam winds his horn at best, Their trumpet 'twas to bring away their feast; Pickt marybones they had, found in the street, Carrots kickt out of kennels with their feet; Crusts gathered up for bisket, twice so dry'd; Alms-tubs, and olla podridas, beside Many such dishes more; but it would cumber Any to name them, more than I can number. Then comes the banquet, which must never fail, That the town gave, of whitebread and strong ale. All were so tipsie, that they could not go, And yet would dance, and cry'd for music hoe: With tonges and gridirons they were play'd unto, And blind men sung, as they are us'd to do. Some whistled, and some hollow sticks did sound, And so melodiously they play around: Lame men, lame women, manfully cry advance, And so, all limping, jovially did dance."

Some women gain a living by going from house to house and begging phials. They pretend that they have an order for medicines at the dispensary, for their dear husband, or only child, but know not in what way to get it without a bottle, as they are obliged to take one of their own; at the same time, some will beg white linen rags to dress wounds with. These they soon turn into money at the old iron shops,--the "dealers in marine stores."

Those who beg old shoes, such as Grannee Manoo, make as much as six or seven shillings a day. They sell them to the people who live in cellars in Monmouth Street, or stalls in Food and Raiment Alley, Rosemary Lane, &c. These persons give them new soles, and are called Translators. In Mountsorrel, Leicestershire, a cobbler of the name of Bates styles himself a translator.

The plate of two Bone-pickers is the next to be described. The physiognomy of the fellow who is stitching patches together to tack to his coat, which consists of some hundreds of bits of old velvet, carpets, &c., would baffle the skill of either Lavater or Spurzheim; it has the mixture of the idiot, the goat, and the bull-dog. Such a visage might have been useful to Spagnolet, or his pupil Salvator. In order to discover a few of the habits of this character, he was followed for several hours through many streets, alleys, and courts, in the parish of St Martin's in the Fields. On his arrival at Moor's Yard, which is said to have been a place for the execution of public criminals in early times, he was accused of stealing door mats, and with some difficulty extricated his tatters from the tugs of a couple of dogs. In Hartshorn Lane, in the Strand, at one time the residence of Ben Jonson, he was seen to take up a brick, and throw it at two curs fighting for a bone, which he picked up and put into his bag. These bones are bought by the burners at Haggerstone, Shoreditch, and Battlebridge, at two shillings per bushel, in which half a bushel is given over, that being bone measure.

Bill Row and John Taylor, two grubbers, are introduced in the next plate. These men, with Stephen Lloyd, form the sum total of their description in London. They procure a livelihood by whatever they find in grubbing out the dirt from between the stones with a crooked bit of iron, in search of nails that fall from horse-shoes, which are allowed to be the best iron that can be made use of for gun-barrels; and though the streets are constantly looked over at the dawn of day by a set of men in search of sticks, handkerchiefs, shawls, &c., that may have been dropped during the night, yet these grubbers now and then find rings that have been drawn off with the gloves, or small money that has been washed by the showers between the stones. These men are frequently employed to clear gully-holes and common sewers, the stench of which is so great that their breath becomes pestilential; and its noxious quality on one occasion had so powerful an effect on a man of the name of Dixie, as to deprive him of two of his senses, smelling and tasting, and yet Ned Flowers followed this calling for forty years.

But there is still a more wretched class of beings than the grubbers, who never know the comfort of dry clothes,--they are, like the leech, perpetually in water. The occupation of these draggle-tail wretches commences on the banks of the Thames at low water. They go up to their knees in mud, to pick up the coals that fall from the barges when at the wharfs. Their flesh and dripping rags are like the coals they carry in small bags across their shoulders, and which they dispose of, at a reduced price, to the meanest order of chandler-shop retailers.

The environs produce characters equally curious with those of London, particularly among that order of people called Simplers, whose business it is to gather and supply the city markets with physical herbs. Such an innocent instance of rustic simplicity is William Friday, whose portrait is exhibited in the following plate. This man starts from Croydon, with champignons, mushrooms, &c., and is alternately snail-picker, leech-bather, and viper-catcher.

The man whose portrait is given in the succeeding plate, mimics the notes of the common English birds by means of a folded bit of tin, similar to that used by Mr Punch's orator, and which is held between the teeth; but in order to engage the attention of the credulous, he pretends, as his lips are nearly closed, to draw his tones from two tobacco-pipes, using one for the fiddle, the other for the bow, and never fails to collect an attentive audience, either in the street or tap-room.

Musicians of this description were at one time very numerous. Gravelot, when he kept a drawing-school in the Strand, made sketches of several. One particularly picturesque, was of a blind chaunter of the old ballads of "There was a wealthy Lawyer," or "O Brave Nell," and has been admirably etched by Miller. This man accompanied his voice by playing upon a catgut string drawn over a bladder, and tied at both ends of a mop-stick; but the boys continually perplexing him by pricking his bladder, and a pampered prodigal having with a sword let out all his wind, he fortunately hit upon a mode of equally charming the ear by substituting a tin tea-canister.

Thomas King, a most excellent painter of conversation-scenes, who lived at the time of Hogarth, and assisted him in his large pictures of Paul before Felix in Lincoln's Inn Hall, and the Good Samaritan in Bartholomew's Hospital, has left portraits of several of these singular beings,--such as Maddox, the balancer of a straw; but particularly that of Matthew Skeggs, who played a concerto upon a broomstick, in the character of Signor Bumbasto, at the little theatre in the Haymarket. These portraits have been engraved by Houston. That of Skeggs was published by himself, at the sign of the Hoop and Bunch of Grapes, in St Alban's Street, now a part of Waterloo Place. Since their time, Mr Meadows, the comedian, has been particularly famous for his imitations of birds; and some of the lowest description of street vagabonds have produced tones by playing upon their chins with their knuckles. Another hero of the knuckle, was the famous Buckhorse, the friend of Ned Shuter, and who formerly sold sticks in Covent Garden. This fellow grew so callous to the blow of the knuckle, as to place his head firmly against a wall, and suffer, for a shilling, any wretch to strike him with his doubled fist, with all his strength, in his face, which became at last more like a Good-Friday bun than any thing human. Of this man there are many portraits.

Of Scottish, Welsh, and Irish mendicants there are now very few in London; perhaps their full number does not exceed fifty, unless by including that lower order of street-musicians who so frequently distract the harmonious ear with their droning bag-pipes, screaming clarionets, and crazy harps. These people, with match, tooth-pick, and cotton-ball venders, may be considered but as one remove from beggary.

The lowest class of the Scotch are bakers' men; the women are laundresses. The Welshmen, of whom London never had many, are principally employed by the potters of Lambeth, at which place they have an old established house of worship. It is a cheerful sight to behold their women, who are remarkable for their cleanliness, and, like the Scotch, are generally pictures of vigorous health. These will go in trains of twenty or thirty persons, from Hammersmith to Covent Garden Market, joining in one national melody, and perfuming the air with their baskets of ripe strawberries.

Of all people the poor Irish are the most anxious to gain employment, and are truly valuable examples of industry. They sleep less than other labourers; for at the dawn of day they assemble in flocks at their usual stands for hire,--namely, Whitechapel, Queen Street, Cheapside, and on the spot formerly occupied by St Giles's pound, at the ends of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. The most laborious of them are chairmen, paviers, bricklayers' labourers, potato-gatherers, and basket-men; and, to the eternal disgrace of the commonalty of the English, these people, as well as the Scotch and Welsh, are guilty of very few excesses, particularly in that odious practice of drinking, a vice so much increased by the accommodation of seats in gin-shops, which are the first opened and last shut in London.

The Irish carry immense loads. A hod of bricks, weighing one hundred and ten pounds, is carried one hundred and twenty times at least in the course of the day, and sometimes up a ladder of the height of five stories, and all for two shillings and ninepence per day. The pavier's rammer, of more than half a hundred weight, is raised not fewer than two thousand times in the course of the day. _What Englishman could do this?_ With respect to loads on the head, the Irish surpass all others. Leary makes nothing of carrying two hundred weight from the Fox under the Hill, near the Adelphi, to Covent Garden, many times on a market morning; and yet, extraordinary as this may appear, his feats have been more than equalled by a female. A man of the name of Eglesfield, who has sold flowers in Covent Garden for the last thirty-six years, knew an Irish girl who would often walk under the weight of two hundred pounds. He declares that she brought a load of one hundred and a half from Newgate Market to Covent Garden on her head, without once pitching, though it must be observed that this was not potato-weight, which has always one hundred and twenty-six pounds to the hundred.

The following woodcut represents the humane manner in which cripples are conveyed from door to door in many parts of Ireland. The following description has been kindly furnished to the Author by a friend, who has frequently assisted in the conveyance, and takes no ordinary interest in the condition of the poor.

In the country parts of Ireland, beggars are treated with great tenderness and pious hospitality. Many of them are recognised as descended from ancient and powerful septs, which decayed in the revolutions of property and influence. During many years after the invasion of King Henry, the houses of hospitality (so amply described in Sir John Davis's Tracts) which were established by the Chiefs for their poor relations and the traveller, were still kept open; and to this hour, some gentry and farmers provide the itinerant beggars with a bed as well as food. The alms are generally given in meal, flax, wool, milk, or potatoes, but seldom in money, except in cities or towns. After receiving a night's lodging or alms, long and devout prayers are distinctly uttered at the door of the benefactor. Like the players in Hamlet, they are the brief chronicles of the times, and their praises of the good frequently contribute to matrimonial connections. In some parts of the country the beggars have a particular day in the week for appearing abroad, when they are plentifully supplied for the remaining six; and those who, from loss of limbs, or other infirmity, are unable to walk, are seated upon barrows, and carried or wheeled from door to door, by the servants of each house or the casual passenger, an act of piety which is not unfrequently performed by members of respectable families. The beggars are seen in crowds near places of Catholic worship, or pilgrimage, and many of them are distinguished for great piety and temperance. The English traveller is sometimes surprised at seeing a venerable figure, clothed in a hair-cloth shirt or tunic, repeating his orisons on the side of a road, with naked shivering limbs, and a beard which for years has been unconscious of a razor. Yet in Ireland, as in other places, there are pretended objects, and beggars who misapply the benefactions of the charitable. They receive no interruption from the police, except in Dublin, where a large close cart frequently returns to the workhouse full of discontented mendicants, who have an extraordinary aversion to restraint upon their freedom, or compulsion to attend the established worship, which is generally different from their own.