by Henry Mayhew
‘I was the fust boy as ever did ornamental work in the mud of my crossings. I used to be at the crossing at the corner of Regent-suckus; and that’s the wery place where I fust did it. The wery fust thing as I did was a hanker (anchor) – a regular one, with turn-up sides and a rope down the centre, and all. I sweeped it away clean in the mud in the shape of the drawing I’d seen. It paid well, for I took one-and-ninepence on it. The next thing I tried was writing “God save the Queen”; and that, too, paid capital, for I think I got two bob. After that I tried We Har (V. R.) and a star, and that was a sweep too. I never did no flowers, but I’ve done imitations of laurels, and put them all round the crossing, and very pretty it looked, too, at night. I’d buy a farthing candle and stick it over it, and make it nice and comfortable, so that the people could look at it easy. Whenever I see a carriage coming I used to douse the glim and run away with it, but the wheels would regularly spile the drawings, and then we’d have all the trouble to put it to rights again, and that we used to do with our hands.
‘I fust learnt drawing in the mud from a man in Adelaide-street, Strand; he kept a crossing, but he only used to draw ’em close to the kerb-stone. He used to keep some soft mud there, and when a carriage come up to the Lowther Arcade, after he’d opened the door and let the lady out, he would set to work, and by the time she come back he’d have some flowers, or a We Har, or whatever he liked, done in the mud, and underneath he’d write, “Please to remember honnest hindustry.”
‘I used to stand by and see him do it, until I’d learnt, and when I knowed, I went off and did it at my crossing.
‘I was the fust to light up at night though, and now I wish I’d never done it, for it was that which got me turned off my crossing, and a capital one it was. I thought the gentlemen coming from the play would like it, for it looked very pretty. The policeman said I was destructing (obstructing) the thoroughfare, and making too much row there, for the people used to stop in the crossing to look, it were so pretty. He took me in charge three times on one night, cause I wouldn’t go away; but he let me go again, till at last I thought he would lock me up for the night, so I hooked it.
‘It was after this as I went to St Martin’s Church, and I haven’t done half as well there. Last night I took three-ha’pence; but I was larking, or I might have had more.’
As a proof of the very small expense which is required for the toilette of a crossing-sweeper, I may mention, that within a few minutes after Master Gander had finished his statement, he was in possession of a coat, for which he had paid the sum of fivepence.
When he brought it into the room, all the boys and the women crowded round to see the purchase.
‘It’s a very good un,’ said the Goose. ‘It only wants just taking up here and there; and this cuff putting to rights.’ And as he spoke he pointed to tears large enough for a head to be thrust through.
‘I’ve seen that coat before, sum ‘ares,’ said one of the women; ‘where did you get it?’
‘At the chandly-shop,’ answered the Goose.
The ‘King’ of the Tumbling-boy Crossing-sweepers
[pp. 567–9] The young sweeper who had been styled by his companions the ‘King’ was a pretty-looking boy, only tall enough to rest his chin comfortably on the mantel-piece as he talked to me, and with a pair of grey eyes that were as bright and clear as drops of sea-water. He was clad in a style in no way agreeing with his royal title; for he had on a kind of dirt-coloured shooting-coat of tweed, which was fraying into a kind of cobweb at the edges and elbows. His trousers too, were rather faulty, for there was a pink-wrinkled dot of flesh at one of the knees; while their length was too great for his majesty’s short legs, so that they had to be rolled up at the end like a washer-woman’s sleeves.
His royal highness was of a restless disposition, and, whilst talking, lifted up, one after another, the different ornaments on the mantel-piece, frowning and looking at them side-ways, as he pondered over the replies he should make to my questions.
When I arrived at the grandmother’s apartment the ‘king’ was absent, his majesty having been sent with a pitcher to fetch some spring-water.
The ‘king’ also was kind enough to favour me with samples of his wondrous tumbling powers. He could bend his little legs round till they curved like the long German sausages we see in the ham-and-beef shops; and when he turned head over heels, he curled up his tiny body as closely as a wood-louse, and then rolled along, wabbling like an egg.
‘The boys call me Johnny,’ he said; ‘and I’m getting on for eleven, and I goes along with the Goose and Harry, a-sweeping at St Martin’s Church, and about there. I used, too, to go to the crossing where the statute is, sir, at the bottom of the Haymarket. I went along with the others; sometimes there were three or four of us, or sometimes one, sir. I never used to sweep unless it was wet. I don’t go out not before twelve or one in the day; it ain’t no use going before that; and beside, I couldn’t get up before that, I’m too sleepy. I don’t stop out so late as the other boys; they sometimes stop all night, but I don’t like that. The Goose was out all night along with Martin; they went all along up Piccirilly, and there they climbed over the Park railings and went a birding all by themselves, and then they went to sleep for an hour on the grass – so they says. I likes better to come home to my bed. It kills me for the next day when I do stop out all night. The Goose is always out all night; he likes it.
‘Neither father nor mother’s alive, sir, but I lives along with grandmother and aunt, as owns this room, and I always gives them all I gets.
‘Sometimes I makes a shilling, sometimes sixpence, and sometimes less. I can never take nothink of a day, only of a night, because I can’t tumble of a day, and I can of a night.
‘The Gander taught me tumbling, and he was the first as did it along the crossings. I can tumble quite as well as the Goose; I can turn a caten-wheel, and he can’t, and I can go further on forards than him, but I can’t tumble backards as he can. I can’t do a handspring, though. Why, a handspring’s pitching yourself forards on both hands, turning over in front, and lighting on your feet; that’s very difficult, and very few can do it. There’s one little chap, but he’s very clever, and can tie himself up in a knot a’most. I’m best at caten-wheels; I can do ’em twelve or fourteen times running – keep on at it. It just does tire you, that’s all. When I gets up I feels quite giddy. I can tumble about forty times over head and heels. I does the most of that, and I thinks it’s the most difficult, but I can’t say which gentlemen likes best. You see they are anigh sick of the head-and-heels tumbling, and then werry few of the boys can do caten-wheels on the crossings – only two or three besides me.
‘When I see anybody coming, I says, “Please, sir, give me a halfpenny,” and touches my hair, and then I throws a caten-wheel, and has a look at ’em, and if I sees they are laughing, then I goes on and throws more of ’em. Perhaps one in ten will give a chap something. Some of ’em will give you a threepenny-bit or p’rhaps sixpence, and others only give you a kick. Well, sir, I should say they likes tumbling over head and heels; if you can keep it up twenty times then they begins laughing, but if you only does it once, some of ’em will say, “Oh, I could do that myself,” and then they don’t give nothink.
‘I know they calls me the King of Tumblers, and I think I can tumble the best of them; none of them is so good as me, only the Goose at tumbling backards.
‘We don’t crab one another when we are sweeping; if we was to crab one another, we’d get to fighting and giving slaps of the jaw to one another. So when we sees anybody coming, we cries, “My gentleman and lady coming here”; “My lady”; “My two gentlemens”; and if any other chap gets the money, then we says, “I named them, now I’ll have halves.” And if he won’t give it, then we’ll smug his broom or his cap. I’m the littlest chap among our lot, but if a fellow like the Goose was to take my naming then I’d smug somethink. I shouldn’t mind his licking me, I’d smug his money and get his halfpence or somethink.
If a chap as can’t tumble sees a sporting gent coming and names him, he says to one of us tumblers, “Now, then, who’ll give us halves?” and then we goes and tumbles and shares. The sporting gentlemens likes tumbling; they kicks up more row laughing than a dozen others.
‘Sometimes at night we goes down to Covent Garden, to where Hevans’s is, but not till all the plays is over, cause Hevans’s don’t shut afore two or three. When the people comes out we gets tumbling afore them. Some of the drunken gentlemens is shocking spiteful, and runs after a chap and gives us a cut with the cane; some of the others will give us money, and some will buy our broom off us for sixpence. Me and Jemmy sold the two of our brooms for a shilling to two drunken gentlemens, and they began kicking up a row, and going before other gentlemens and pretending to sweep, and taking off their hats begging, like a mocking of us. They danced about with the brooms, flourishing ’em in the air, and knocking off people’s hats; and at last they got into a cab, and chucked the brooms away. The drunken gentlemens is always either jolly or spiteful.
‘But I goes only to the Haymarket, and about Pall Mall, now. I used to be going up to Hevans’s every night, but I can’t take my money up there now. I stands at the top of the Haymarket by Windmill-street, and when I sees a lady and gentleman coming out of the Argyle, then I begs of them as they comes across. I says – “Can’t you give me a ha’penny, sir, poor little Jack? I’ll stand on my nose for a penny” – and then they laughs at that.
‘Goose can stand on his nose as well as me; we puts the face flat down on the ground, instead of standing on our heads. There’s Duckey Dunnovan, and the Stuttering Baboon, too, and two others as well, as can do it; but the Stuttering Baboon’s getting too big and fat to do it well; he’s a very awkward tumbler. It don’t hurt, only at laming; cos you bears more on your hands than your nose.
‘Sometimes they says – “Well, let us see you do it,” and then p’raps they’ll search in their pockets, and say – “O, I haven’t got any coppers:” so then we’ll force ’em, and p’raps they’ll pull out their purse and gives us a little bit of silver.
‘Ah, we works hard for what we gets, and then there’s the policeman birching us. Some of ’em is so spiteful, they takes up their belt what they uses round the waist to keep their coat tight, and ’ll hit us with the buckle; but we generally gives ’em the lucky dodge and gets out of their way.
‘One night, two gentlemen, officers they was, was standing in the Haymarket, and a drunken man passed by. There was snow on the ground, and we’d been begging of ’em, and says one of them – “I’ll give you a shilling if you’ll knock than drunken man over.” We was three of us; so we set on him, and soon had him down. After he got up he went and told the policemen, but we all cut round different ways and got off, and then met again. We didn’t get the shilling, though, cos a boy crabbed us. He went up to the gentleman, and says he – “Give it me, sir, I’m the boy;” and then we says – “No, sir, it’s us.” So, says the officer – “I sharn’t give it to none of you,” and puts it back again in his pockets. We broke a broom over the boy as crabbed us, and then we cut down Waterloo-place, and afterwards we come up to the Haymarket again, and there we met the officers again. I did a caten-wheel, and then says I – “Then won’t you give me un now?” and they says – “Go and sweep some mud on that woman.” So I went and did it, and then they takes me in a pastry-shop at the corner, and they tells me to tumble on the tables in the shop. I nearly broke one of ’em, they were so delicate. They gived me a fourpenny meat-pie and two penny sponge-cakes, which I puts in my pocket, cos there was another sharing with me. The lady of the shop kept on screaming – “Go and fetch me a police – take the dirty boy out,” cos I was standing on the tables in my muddy-feet, and the officers was a bursting their sides with laughing; and says they, “No, he sharn’t stir.”
‘I was frightened, cos if the police had come they’d been safe and sure to have took me. They made me tumble from the door to the end of the shop, and back again, and then I turned ’em a caten-wheel, and was near knocking down all the things as was on the counter.
‘They didn’t give me no money, only pies; but I got a shilling another time for tumbling to some French ladies and gentlemen in a pastry-cook’s shop under the Colonnade. I often goes into a shop like that; I’ve done it a good many times.
‘There was a gentleman once as belonged to a “suckus”, [circus] as wanted to take me with him abroad, and teach me tumbling. He had a little mustache, and used to belong to Drury-lane play-house, riding on horses. I went to his place, and stopped there some time. He taught me to put my leg round my neck, and I was just getting along nicely with the splits (going down on the ground with both legs extended), when I left him. They (the splits) used to hurt worst of all; very bad for the thighs. I used, too, to hang with my leg round his neck. When I did anythink he liked, he used to be clapping me on the back. He wasn’t so very stunning well off, for he never had what I calls a good dinner – grandmother used to have a better dinner than he, – perhaps only a bit of scrag of mutton between three of us. I don’t like meat nor butter, but I likes dripping, and they never had none there. The wife used to drink – ay, very much, on the sly. She used when he was out to send me round with a bottle and sixpence to get a quartern of gin for her, and she’d take it with three or four oysters. Grandmother didn’t like the notion of my going away, so she went down one day, and says she – “I wants my child;” and the wife says – “That’s according to the master’s likings;” and then grandmother says – “What, not my own child?” And then grandmother began talking, and at last, when the master come home, he says to me – “Which will you do, stop here, or go home with your grandmother?” So I come along with her.
‘I’ve been sweeping the crossings getting on for two years. Before that I used to go caten-wheeling after the busses. I don’t like the sweeping, and I don’t think there’s e’er a one of us wot likes it. In the winter we has to be out in the cold, and then in summer we have to sleep out all night, or go asleep on the church-steps, reg’lar tired out.
‘One of us’ll say at night – “Oh, I’m sleepy now, who’s game for a doss? I’m for a doss” – and when we go eight or ten of us into a doorway of the church, where they keep the dead in a kind of airy-like underneath, and there we go to sleep. The most of the boys has got no homes. Perhaps they’ve got the price of a lodging, but they’re hungry, and they eats the money, and then they must lay out. There’s some of ’em will stop out in the wet for perhaps the sake of a halfpenny, and get themselves sopping wet. I think all our chaps would like to get out of the work if they could; I’m sure Goose would, and so would I.
‘All the boys call me the King, because I tumbles so well, and some calls me “Pluck”, and some “Judy”. I’m called “Pluck”, cause I’m so plucked a going at the gentlemen! Tommy Dunnovan – “Tipperty Tight” – we calls
THE BOY CROSSING-SWEEPERS.
him, cos his trousers is so tight he can hardly move in them sometimes, – he was the first as called me “Judy”. Dunnovan once swallowed a pill for a shilling. A gentleman in the Haymarket says – “If you’ll swallow this here pill I’ll give you a shilling;” and Jimmy says, “All right, sir;” and he puts it in his mouth, and went to the water-pails near the cab-stand and swallowed it.
‘All the chaps in our gang likes me, and we all likes one another. We always shows what we gets given to us to eat.
‘Sometimes we gets one another up wild, and then that fetches up a fight, but that isn’t often. When two of us fights, the others stands round and sees fair play. There was a fight last night between “Broke his Bones” – as we calls Antony Hones – and Neddy Hall – the “Sparrow”, or “Spider”, we calls him – something about the root of a pineapple, as we was aiming with at one another, and that called up a fight. We all stood round and saw them at it, but neither of ’em licked, for they gived in for to-day, and they’re to finish it to-night. We makes ’em fight fair. We all of us l
ikes to see a fight, but not to fight ourselves. Hones is sure to beat, as Spider is as thin as a wafer, and all bones. I can lick the Spider, though he’s twice my size.’
The Street Where the Boy Sweepers Lodged
[pp. 569–70] I was anxious to see the room in which the gang of boy crossing-sweepers lived, so that I might judge of their peculiar style of house-keeping, and form some notion of their principles of domestic economy.
I asked young Harry and ‘the Goose’ to conduct me to their lodgings, and they at once consented, ‘the Goose’ prefacing his compliance with the remark, that ‘it wern’t such as genilmen had been accustomed to, but then I must take ’em as they was.’
The boys led me in the direction of Drury-lane; and before entering one of the narrow streets which branch off like the side-bones of a fish’s spine from that long thoroughfare, they thought fit to caution me that I was not to be frightened, as nobody would touch me, for all was very civil.
The locality consisted of one of those narrow streets which, were it not for the paved cart-way in the centre would be called a court. Seated on the pavement at each side of the entrance was a costerwoman with her basket before her, and her legs tucked up mysteriously under her gown into a round ball, so that her figure resembled in shape the plaster tumblers sold by the Italians. These women remained as inanimate as if they had been carved images, and it was only when a passenger went by that they gave signs of life, by calling out in a low voice, like talking to themselves, ‘Two for three haarpence – her-rens’ – ‘Fine hinguns.’
The street itself is like the description given of thoroughfares in the East. Opposite neighbours could not exactly shake hands out of window, but they could talk together very comfortably; and, indeed, as I passed along, I observed several women with their arms folded up like a cat’s paws on the sill, and chatting with their friends over the way.