JONATHAN WILD'S SKELETON.
The two sheriffs of London have also State Coaches, burnished and blazoned with gold, and hung with silks and velvets, and although they only receive £1,000 for their year's services, the expense of state coaches, horses, liveries, and drivers, never falls below 2,500 guineas for their term. They are not allowed to serve if they swear themselves to be worth over £15,000, or $75,000.
The ceremony of installing a London sheriff I am afraid would make a New York Sheriff howl, and much profanity would result were the ancient ceremonies to become necessary at the City Hall of New York. I give the curious form of installation of a Sheriff of London.
wild
JONATHAN WILD'S SKELETON.
The sheriffs are chosen by the Livery Companies or Trade Associations of London, on the morning of the Feast of St. Michael, and are presented in the Court of Exchequer, accompanied by the Lord Mayor and all the Aldermen, when the Recorder of London introduces the two sheriffs, one for London proper, and the other for Middlesex County, and the Chief Judge in his red robes, signifies the Queen's assent, handing the sheriff's "roll"—a sheet of paper which has had the names of the sheriffs pricked in by the Queen's own hand, the writs and appliances are read and filed, and the sheriffs and senior under-sheriffs take the oaths; when the late sheriffs present their accounts. The crier of the court then makes proclamation for one who does homage for the sheriffs of London to "stand forth and do his duty;" when the senior alderman below the chair rises, the usher of the court hands him a bill-hook, and holds in both hands a small bundle of sticks, which the alderman cuts asunder, and then cuts another bundle with a hatchet. Similar proclamation is then made for the sheriff of Middlesex, when the alderman counts six horse-shoes lying upon the table, and sixty-one hob-nails handed in a tray; and the numbers are declared twice.
The sticks are thin peeled twigs tied in a bundle at each end with red tape; the horse-shoes are of large size, and very old; the hob-nails are supplied fresh every year. By the first ceremony the alderman does suit and service for the tenants of a manor in Shropshire, the chopping of sticks betokening the custom of the tenants supplying their lord with fuel. The counting of the horse-shoes and nails is another suit and service of the owners of a forge in St. Clement Danes, Strand, which formerly belonged to the city, but no longer exists. Sheriff Hoare, in his MS. journal of his shrievalty, 1740-41, says, "where the tenements and lands are situated no one knows, nor doth the city receive any rents or profits thereby."
In the Town Hall or Guildhall of London, some very strange relics are preserved, but none can be more strange than the yellow faded parchment shown me on which was written the humble petition of that notorious rascal and thief-taker, Jonathan Wild, who had first trained Jack Sheppard to thievery, after which he entrapped and hung him. Well, this very virtuous old gentleman had the audacity to send a petition to the Court of Aldermen in the year 1724, praying for the freedom of the City in view of the benefit he had conferred on it by the apprehension of so many thieves who had returned from transportation.
One day while paying a visit to a celebrated surgeon, whose residence is at Windsor, I was invited to look into his closets, in which were stored a number of curiosities. Suddenly a door in a recess of the chamber flew open, and out popped a skeleton on wires, with a ghastly, grinning jaw, and its ribs all open like the timbers of a wrecked ship.
"That's the skeleton of Jonathan Wild," said the surgeon, "It has been in our family for a hundred years, I believe."
CHAPTER XXVI.
STREET SIGHTS OF LONDON.
VERY strange sights are seen in London. No city that I have ever visited will compare with London for the number of its street peddlers, hawkers, booth proprietors, open-air performers, ballad singers, mountebanks, and other street itinerants.
From daybreak until dark, and long into the night, in the ramification of Streets and Lanes, Squares, Mews, and Ovals, the ear of the stranger is saluted with the harshest and most discordant sounds which emanate from the throats of a street-selling population of both sexes, large enough alone to make the population of a fifth-rate city.
The London Cockney who has heard the same grating sounds from the days of his earliest childhood, never stops in his walk to listen to the cries, but the stranger in London is compelled by the very want of melody or intelligibility in the hawker's cries to listen, yet it is useless for him to attempt to solve the meaning of their uncouth and barbarous gibberage.
For these seventy-five thousand men, women, and boys, as well as girls, many of a tender age—have their several dialects, and signals, and patois, which it would be madness to try to understand without a thorough schooling in the rudiments of their language and several occupations.
In another part of this work I have taken a glance at the London Costermongers and their habits and amusements, such as they are.
Beside this, the largest and most hard-working class of street hawkers, there are a hundred other branches of street merchandise, and all these different branches have their followers, who navigate every quarter of the metropolis, trying to pick up a shilling here and there from the sale of their commodities, as luck or energy may chance to send the shilling their way.
It is calculated that the gross receipts of the street peddlers of London amount to as much as £5,000,000 a year. This would make an average of £70 a year, or nearly $500 for each person engaged in street peddling. Of course in this aggregate I must include all those who keep stands or booths of a greater or lesser magnitude.
Some of these poor wretches may earn in good weeks about fifteen to twenty shillings, while at other seasons when green stuff is scarce, it is rarely that they exceed more than eight shillings on an average for the same amount of labor and hawking.
Ten shillings, however, is a fair week's earning if that amount be realized during the current year. It may be calculated that the profits will average as high as £1,500,000 where the gross receipts for sales are as high as £5,000,000.
A bitter hostility exists between the tradesmen who occupy shops and pay what they consider to be exorbitant rents, and the street sellers. No sooner has a street seller made a round of custom for himself and advertised his wares sufficiently, than the blue-coated policeman is sure to appear, armed with the authority which cannot be disobeyed, and he is compelled to move his stand or barrow.
The hawker or peddler is forced to pay four or five pounds a year for a license to sell in this precarious way, and yet in London he has no legal right to occupy a stand or booth. He has always to move on, like the boy Joe in Bleak House.
It is more than wonderful to think of the shifts made by the poor classes of London to make a living.
SECOND-HAND BOOTS AND SHOES.
The rich man passes by objects in the crowded streets every day with scorn or loathing, which serve to yield a sustenanceto the indigent population, and even the offal of the streets will bring a price when offered for sale. The work of the class who gather this material is generally done before daybreak, and in some cases their earnings are considerable.
The second-hand metal and tool sellers are to be found chiefly as proprietors of booths or barrows in the vicinity of Petticoat and Rosemary Lanes. The street trade of the city is, to a great extent, done by those who have barrows, and as it is convenient for them to move their barrows from place to place, the costermongers are found all over the metropolis.
I made it my business to go almost incessantly among those street hawkers, and I got from them a vast amount of useful information, and a great many statistics.
Some of them tell curious stories, and have considerable wit of a coarse kind, but to the wandering American they are, with few exceptions, very civil, and will relate their checkered life-histories with great eagerness.
There are hundreds of old boot and shoe shops and stands, where a great business is carried on in the mending, patching, and vending of old shoes and boots.
In one branch of the street trade alone, it will be interesting to give some statistics which may be deemed reliable, as having been collected by Mr. Henry Mayhew. There are shops and stands included in this trade alone—
About two thousand five hundred men are employed mending and patching shoes. Then there are hundreds of poor men and women who gain subsistence, but barely subsistence, by collecting the old material of all articles that are made of leather, and selling it to those who keep shops or stands.
I visited the lodgings of a man, in Cutler street, who paid his landlord a weekly rent of 1s.8d.for the use of one bare room, which had no furniture with the exception of a three-legged chair upon which he sat—and a heap of straw and dirty rags, which served him as a bed. On the bare mantel-piece was a broken loaf of brown-bread, and a cooked kidney, with a broken mustard-pot.
The man was named Ferguson, and had only one eye, the other having been obliterated by the small pox. He was a cheerful old fellow, this peddler of second-hand boots and shoes, and seemed to take the world as it came without thought of the morrow. I told him that I was in search of information, and statistics in regard to the working people of London, and he offered me very politely his only stool. I declined the courtesy and sat on the heap of rags while he told his story.
"Ye need not be afeered of the bugs, yer honor, in the bed. The place is not warm enough for them to stay here.
"Stistiks ye want is it? Well, I don't know how I can give ye stistiks, but I can tell you my own story.
"I began life a shoemaker's apprentice, in Edinburgh, although I am by birth an Englishman. My master's name was Mac Donald, and when he drank whiskey his temper generally ruz, and the divil couldn't stand him or get the better of him. So I listed for a soldier and went to furrin parts, and after I sarved my time I came back a good deal wiser but not a penny richer of it all.
THE DOG FANCIER.
"I had my ups and downs when I came back, but I didn't marry, as it was too bad to bring another person into poverty besides myself. I've smoked a pipe when I was troubled in mind and could not get a bite to eat, or a drop of gin to drink, but how would it be if I had a young daughter? What good would it do to smoke if she wos hungry and I had nothing toeat for her. I used to sell cherries and strawberries, and then I gave that up and went into the old shoe trade. It paid better, but sometimes I hadn't a penny-piece for two days at a time, and I would have to sell my stock to get my grub.
"The regular sort of men's shoes are not a werry good sale. I gets from ten-pence to five shillings a pair, but the high priced ones is always soled or heeled and covered with mud. I gets from one shilling to two-and-sixpence for cloth in the shoes, when they are in decent trim. Blucher's brings two shillings and upwards, and Wellington's about the same. I have sold children's shoes as low as three-pence and as high as one and sixpence. I carry a wooden seat with me so that a man who wants to buy from me can sit down and try on a pair anywhere. People who havn't got any money to throw away generally likes to get their second-hand boots or shoes as big as you have them, cos wy, when they take them in the rain if they are a tight fit they can't put them on."
On an average the one-eyed boot and shoe seller informed me that he made about four to seven shillings a week, and he called it a very good week when he managed to make ten shillings profit.
Dog-sellers, of whom there are about two hundred in London, always choose the most public places for their stations.
Down in Parliament street, opposite the Horse Guards, in Trafalgar square, at the base of Nelson's Monument, in Upper Regent street by the Coliseum, on the steps of the Bank and the Royal Exchange, on Waterloo Bridge and along the Thames Embankment, and in fact wherever a large open space may be found, or a well known public building located, the dog-fancier may be noticed with a poodle between his legs, a black and tan under one arm and a spaniel under the other, and by his side, it is more than probable that a basket will be placed full of live, kicking, and sagacious pups, of different colors and of as many breeds.
These dog-sellers are the keenest street traders to be found in London, and dramatists and playwrights are never weary of making sketches and amusing characters of dog fanciers.
Some years ago, two rascals, bearing the names of "Ginger" and "Carrots," made themselves famous for the number of dogs stolen by them. At last it was impossible for any canine to escape these fellows, and so industrious did they become in the pursuit of them that they were arrested by the police and sent to the House of Correction for six months, which is the penalty for stealing one dog, yet "Ginger" and "Carrots" had, in their career, stolen thousands of unsuspecting yelpers from their owners.
In one year 60 dogs were reported lost, 606 stolen, 38 persons were charged with dog stealing, 18 of whom were convicted, and 20 discharged.
It is a fact worth noting, that, excepting in rare cases, the dog stealers do not affiliate with or frequent the company of house-breakers, or thieves of any other class. Dog stealing among professionals is looked upon as a noble science, and deserving of long and arduous practice.
On wet days, when pedestrians may be forced by the suddenness of the rain gusts to seek refuge in some arcade or colonade, like those in Piccadilly or the Regents' Quadrant, it is then that the dog fancier suddenly emerges from his hibernation, and knowing that he will have the attention of a group of people who are without occupation while in shelter, he may be certain to dispose of his dogs to advantage. It is upon old and timid ladies that these dog venders are sure to practice their tricks.
Let an old maid but look longingly at some hairy poodle or woolly King Charles,—then woe be to her if she attempt to escape without buying.
"Wot," said one heartless villain of a dog fancier to a spinster wearing gold spectacles, who was trying to make her escape from his alarming language, as he stood in the Strand with a pet poodle in his arms, "does ye keep me 'ere a torkin for three blessed hours and then ye goes hoff without buying this beutifool dorg as is dirt cheap at twenty pounds and I hoffers it to ye for five sovs. I say, do take it with ye and make a muff of hit, the precious dear. All ye have to do is to get itslegs and tail cut off, and get its insides scooped out, and ye'll have a splendid muff. Wot, ye won't buy, hey? Pir-leece, Pir-leece," and the fellow began to scream for the police as if the poor frightened old maid had intended to rob him.
WHO KEEP BIRDS.
Bird-Sellers frequent the New Cut, Lambeth, Bermondsey, Whitechapel, Billingsgate, and Smithfield, as well as the different streets of Southwark and Blackfriars.
There are hundreds of these bird-sellers to be found hawking their birds all over the city. They are shrewd, speculative men, and can tell a bird's age and power of singing almost at a glance.
The smallest cage costs sixpence, and a thrush and cage of a common kind is valued at 2s.6d.A canary that sings well may fetch about 3s.The hens or female birds do not have a large sale, and the trade in pigeons is decreasing, owing to the emigration of many of the Spitalfield weavers, who had a great love for pigeons and were the principal breeders of that bird in England.
The poorer the family, the more likely that a bird will be found in the house; and stable boys, laborers, and the humbler class of artisans, are in the habit of keeping birds in their dwellings.
It is also curious to notice the love formed by women who lead an abandoned life, for all kinds of birds, chiefly, however, for those that will sing. I noticed, in making a tour of inspection with the police among the Slums of the Haymarket, that nearly every woman of foreign extraction and of dissolute life had a linnet, canary, or blackbird, in her room. Frenchwomen of this class are very fond of canaries. Poor, lonely, forsaken wretches, it is the instinct of deprived maternity which demands that they should have something to love and make a pet of.
Sailors, who have returned from long voyages, will stop in the street when they see a bird-seller's stand, look at it for a moment with open mouth, and taking out a handful of silver, will give the bird-fancier any price he chooses to ask for a sweet singing bird. The bird will serve as a gift to some femalerelative, a wife, or as, in many cases, some woman of the town will receive the cage and its occupant as a gift from the drunken Jack-Tar.
About five thousand parrots are imported and sold annually in London. They are chiefly brought from Africa, and a fine parrot will bring as high as a pound. Quite a number of these birds die on the homeward voyage, and this makes the price of parrots very high. Birds' nests are also sold in the streets by Italian and Savoyard boys in great numbers.
Squirrels, rabbits, and gold and silver fish may be also found for sale in the streets, the latter being bought to keep in glass globes as ornaments.
At every railroad station, in and outside of London, a person can be weighed for a penny. A man named Read has at least one hundred weighing chairs, which he rents out to men and boys at a certain rate of the gross receipts. On the different bridges cripples and retired soldiers may be found with brass instruments for testing the lungs and power of a man's arms, and also machines are to be found in front of well-known public houses, and in the parks and squares, for measuring the height of pedestrians.
There was one old fellow with whom I became acquainted, who kept a measuring and a weighing machine.
His station was on the Middlesex side of the Waterloo Bridge. He told me that he had been a pot-boy in a cheap eating house for five years, and then was a helper in a gentleman's stable for six years. One of his arms was rendered useless from an attack of paralysis, and finding that he could not any longer work as a helper, he borrowed enough money to purchase the weighing and measuring machines.
Having some curiosity to know the average weight and height of his many customers, I made a bargain with him, as he could read and write, to keep a record of his experience for three days of the physique of those who patronized his machines.
His patrons were chiefly laboring men on the new Thames Embankment, boatmen plying on the river, clerks going and coming to their business over Waterloo Bridge, and soldiers.
COKE SELLERS.
His largest income was on Saturday nights, when the laboring people were flush of copper pennies, and as nearly every third man was sure to be drunk going over the bridge on Saturday night, he was certain to reap a good harvest from their generous pockets.
In three days he had weighed one hundred and thirty-two persons of the male sex, and eight women. The average weight of each person I found was, including the women, one hundred and fifty-five pounds. The number of persons measured for their height was sixty-four, and the average tallness of each person, among which number was only one female, was five feet eight inches. The soldiers were of course the tallest. These figures speak well for the London Cockneys. One of the women, a cook, measured six feet, and weighed one hundred and ninety-eight lbs. I gave the venerable statistician a shilling and bade him good-bye, but not before I had received his blessing in fervent tones.
coke
COKE PEDDLER.
The consumption of coke purchased from the various gas houses of the city by peddlers and hawkers is enormous.
There are about two thousand persons concerned in this street trade, one hundred of whom are women, and the aggregate includes boys. The various gas companies realize a yearly sum equal to six million of dollars from the sale of the coke. The peddlers distribute the coke to their customers in large vans, wheelbarrows, donkey carts, hand carts, and some of these strong limbed, broad chested fellows, carry the coke from door to door in large sacks. A few of the women own routes, and hire boys or men to sell the coke, giving them eight to twelve shillings a week, according to their merits and enterprise as hawkers. Coke is bought by these hawkers at the gas houses at from three to four pence per bushel, and is sold by them again at eight pence per bushel.
In giving the rates which I will have occasion to quote from time to time in this work, I shall generally give the prices in British money.
Salt is also vended in carts and wheelbarrows like coke, and some of the peddlers of that much desired article for seasoning and preserving food, sell in one day as much as five hundred pounds. The wholesale price to the hawkers is about 2s. 6d. per hundred pounds, and it is sold by them to the poor people in thickly populated districts, at a penny a pound, or sometimes cheaper.
Sand is sold in large quantities to the keepers of publics and small shops, and to those keeping stalls in the old markets, at twenty shillings a load, and the sand peddlers pay a license of two pounds per annum. In fact all the London peddlers pay a tax or license of some kind or another.
One of the strangest sights in London is the "Bum Boat" of a "Purl," or warm beer seller, who may be found now and then of a dark foggy day plying his vocation on the Thames.
Formerly there were hundreds of these beer peddlers upon the river, but I believe that there are but a few, perhaps not more than five or six, who still follow this occupation.
One day while pulling around the shipping below London bridge in a small boat, I came across one of the "Bum Boat" men, who might, I believe, be taken as a very fair specimen of his class, or calling, once numerous, but now only a scattered remnant of their former numbers.
STOCK IN TRADE.
This fellow, a sun-browned-looking man of thirty years of age or thereabout, was impelling a craft, a strongly constructed, broad bottomed barge or yawl, in and out among the smokylooking coal barges, fish and oyster craft and coasting steamers. He wore a dark blue guernsey shirt and a yellow oil-skin jacket, with heavy water boots which encased his large legs from the knees downward. An immense "Sou'-wester" shaded his broad face, and he was trying to drive the fog away by smoking a dreadful black clay pipe.
At the stern of the boat was a rough canvas awning, and under this the "Purl" man told me that he slept for weeks and months, while his boat lay at anchorage in some of the nooks of the busy river.
boatman
BUM BOAT MAN.
He seldom or ever went ashore, excepting when necessity compelled him to debark for the purpose of laying in beer and other stock for his customers.
In the bottom of the boat were heaps of fresh onions, a bag of potatoes, a couple of bushels of Swedish turnips, parsnips, carrots, some packages of tea and coffee in small square brown parcels, tied with white string, a tin box full of muttonchops and beef steaks, cut ready for sale, and other articles of food that would be most relished by seafaring men on their return from a voyage.
There were also in the boat a small patent sheet-iron furnace, two little casks of beer, each containing about four gallons of that beverage, a can with a gallon of gin of the cheap and fiery brand, and two tin pannikins in which he warmed the beer, or "Purl," as it is called, upon the small sheet-iron stove. This he sold hot to the sailors, oystermen, and coal bargees, at four pence a pint. It was most wonderful to see the dexterous manner in which this Bum Boat man passed in and out between the numerous craft, paddling and ringing a hand bell the while, without any collision or trouble, and then to hear through the fog, the answering cries from the sailors who recognized his welcome bell:
"Boat ahoy!"
"Bell ah-o-o-y!"
"P-i-n-t o' P-u-r-l a-h-o-o-y!"
Then for an instant the bell would cease, and the dark shapes of the "Bum Boat" and its proprietor would be seen, as the latter stood up to reach a noggin of gin to a bargee, or a pewter pint of foaming hot "Purl" to some thirsty soul of a tar just arrived from Greenwich, Glasgow, or Cork.
The "Bum Boat" man is one of the most picturesque sights of that most picturesque of cities, London. The few who still ply their avocation on the river, are in pretty comfortable circumstances, and their lives are as happy as can be imagined, much more so, I have no doubt, than they were when there were hundreds of them paddling about the river and impoverishing themselves by a ruinous competition.
HOW DICK GETS HIS PORRIDGE.
I have often noticed miserable, wan, and half naked looking little children, in and around the Regent's Circus, and in the neighborhood of the Cafés and Pall Mall, with small bags made from the material used in potato sacks, collecting cigar ends and crusts of bread from ash heaps and dust bins. Wondering what use could be made of these disgusting fragments, I one day accosted a lad of twelve years or thereabouts, whowas busily engaged in searching a dust bin near Simpson's Tavern in the Strand, which is a resort for fashionable diners out.
I said to him, after giving him a penny, which will always unclose the lips of the sauciest London street boy:
"Child, why do you collect these fragments of crusts and cigar ends?"
"Mister," said the half frightened child, who took me at the first glance for a detective in plain clothes—and by the way, it seems as if every poorly clad and hungry man and woman in London were suspicious of the police, for the reason that they are poorly clad, and for that reason alone—
cigar
"I GETS IT FOR CIGAR STUMPS."
"Mister," said the hungry child, whose face was prematurely aged, "I aint doing nothink; I was only grabbing the crusts for porridge."
"For porridge,—how do you make the porridge, my lad?"
"My mother—she is down in Milbank street, and has got the small pox, but before she was sick she used to bile the crusts in hot water and put a pennorth o' oat meal in the pot. She borrowed the pot from Mrs. Clarke, she did."
"Who makes the porridge now, boy," said I to him.
"A gal—me big sister Mag—she makes ladies' shoes for a shop, and wacks me when she's mad and I aint got no money for gin. I likes porridge, and Mag she makes it so preshis 'ot. My name's Dick."
"Well, Dick, how do you get the 'pennorth' of oat meal for the porridge?"
"I gets it for cigar stumps. I finds a lot on 'em and sells 'em, and I gets ten browns for a pound on 'em. The tibbaccy man buys 'em, but he wont buy the short ones, cause he says they are all wet and the tibbaccy is all gone from them. I makes tuppence a day sometimes."
There are, I am told, fifty or sixty persons, men and boys, some of whom are Irish, engaged in this branch of the Street Finders' vocation.
It would be tedious to give an account of all the different branches of street selling and buying in London. Their number is legion, and it would be the work of weeks to merely recapitulate all the strange ways and means whereby wretchedness exists in the heart of surrounding splendor, and what would seem to be, but is not—an all-pervading charity.
But I cannot close this chapter without glancing at the street performers—street "Peep" Shows, Reciters, Showmen, Strong Men, Dancing boys and men, Tom Tom players, Street Clowns and Acrobats, Bagpipe players, Negro Serenaders, Street Bands, Punch and Judy shows, and other street folk, who are almost if not as numerous as the hawkers and collectors.
There is to be seen on Saturday nights, in the vicinity of Farringdon and the old London markets, now and then a stray Peep Show man, who frequents the most crowded districts, where the poorer people have money to spend. These Peep Shows are conveyed through the streets on a low four wheeled wagon, sometimes by the performer or proprietor in person, at other times by a donkey. Donkeys cost from two to five pounds in London, according to their breed and tractability.
On the wagon a square box is generally placed, having a large glass front, which is covered with green baize or a dirty velvet curtain.
street
STREET ACROBATS.
This screen conceals the automaton figures that are set in motion by the man in charge. Sometimes there is a hurdy gurdy, or hand organ, attached, and while the exhibitor turnsa crank to allow the spectators to look at the revolving pictures of the "Capture of the Malakoff," the "Death of Nelson," "Napoleon at Waterloo," or some other historic picture, the hurdy gurdy will play "Old Dog Tray," "The Lancashire Lass," or some other popular ditty. Representations of the most horrible murders, or executions of well known criminals, are much relished by the London mobs, and are well patronized. One of these men told me that he was accustomed to take three and four shillings on Saturday nights in Farringdon market or theNew Cut, while during the week he might not make four shillings altogether.
STREET ACROBATS.
Street acrobats, or posturers, are often met with in London. They are to be found usually in streets which have one end closed, or near the river. Thus the traffic is not impeded, owing to the absence of vehicles; and a street like those which run off the Strand toward the river will be quiet as the grave all day long until near the dusk, when all at once, as if by magic, a curious crowd of men, women, and children will collect around a man and boy or boys, who will in the most business like fashion proceed to divest themselves of their outward clothing, which of course is of a rather shabby kind, and in a few moments they will appear in all the glory of flesh-colored tights, just as they may be seen standing in the sawdust of a circus arena. Their foreheads are glorious with silver tinsel or silk ribbon fillets, their loins girt with strips of velvet, and their whole rig of a theatrical character. Some of the children are really handsome, and most exquisitely shaped, the results of athletic exercise and free fresh air. But the men, poor devils, have all of them a haggard, worn, fretful look, with hollowed cheek and straggling gray hair.
Having placed a piece of carpet, rather threadbare in appearance, in the middle of the street, after selecting the cleanest spot for it, these fellows (who are soon in the centre of a ring of people, from whom coppers are collected while the acrobats are bounding in air), go to work, and for half an hour will amaze, delight, edify, and instruct the grown children, larking street boys, and nursery maids of the neighborhood, and having collected perhaps ten pence or a shilling, they will gather up the carpet, don their sober, shabby garments, and find another quarter to do their trapeze, pyramid, and dancing feats.
Nearly all these street acrobats are bruised, or are in some way injured, and many die young from falls.
Occasionally they will disappear from the crowded London streets, in search of a scanty existence in some miserable provincial barn of a theatre or music hall, and years may perhaps elapse before their pinched cheeks and hungry eyeswill again be encountered in the shabby chop houses and dark, lanes of London. Six shillings a week is as much as these poor wanderers, soiled by the glare of tallow candles in crazy barns and sheds, can expect to make in the provincial towns and villages. Therefore London, with all its misery, is very dear to them, for with much less toil and labor they can realize twelve to fifteen shillings per week in the Capital.
PUNCH AND JUDY SHOW.
But the great and lasting attraction among the multifarious street scenes of London, is the Punch and Judy show, the delight of joyous children, of the rich and poor, whether in Belgravia or St. Giles. And indeed, Punch and Judy shows reap more profit in a poor and squalid district than they will in the aristocratic quarters.
judy
PUNCH AND JUDY.
It is rarely that the police will disturb these street shows, unless that householders should prefer a complaint that they were annoyed, and then of course they are driven away. I have myself looked and listened for many an hour to these absurdly humorous shows, to Punch and Judy, the Dog, the Clown, and some negro characters selected for the exhibition. Usually there is a man, his wife, and a boy to collect the pennies thrown from windows or given by the crowd which assembles to witness the performance.
The man plays the pipes, fastened at his breast, and the drum with his elbow; and the woman keeps the figures in motion on the miniature stage, the back of which is hidden by a green curtain or tent, placed in the cart. Behind this screen the woman conceals herself and talks for the little automaton figures. There is a set dialogue in which the figures are supposed to converse, and as it is seldom changed, I give the following portion of a comedy of conversation, as that chiefly used for many years by the London Punch and Judy shows:
Enter Judy.Punch.What a sweet creature! what a handsome nose and chin! (He pats Judy on the face lovingly.)Judy.Keep quiet, do! (Slapping him wickedly.)Punch.Don't be cross, my ducky, but give me a kiss.Judy.Oh, to be sure, my love. (They embrace and kiss.)Punch.Bless your sweet lips. (Hugging her.) These are melting moments. I'm very fond of my wife, I must have a dance.Judy.Agreed. (Dancing.)Punch.Get out of the way, you don't dance well enough for me. (Hits her on the nose.) Go and fetch the baby, and mind and take care of it and not hurt it. (Judy goes off.)Judy.(Coming back with the baby.)Take care of the baby while I go and cook the dumplings.Punch.(Striking Judy with his hand.) Get out of the way! I'll take care of the baby (and Judy goes out).Punch.(Sits down and sings to the baby.)"Hush a-bye baby on the tree top,When the wind blows the cradle will rock;When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,Down comes the baby, cradle and all."(The baby cries and Punch throws it up and down violently.)Punch.What a cross child! I can't abear cross children. (Shakes the baby and pretends that he is about to kill it, and finally throws it out of the window.)Enter Judy.Judy.Where is the baby?
Enter Judy.
Punch.What a sweet creature! what a handsome nose and chin! (He pats Judy on the face lovingly.)
Judy.Keep quiet, do! (Slapping him wickedly.)
Punch.Don't be cross, my ducky, but give me a kiss.
Judy.Oh, to be sure, my love. (They embrace and kiss.)
Punch.Bless your sweet lips. (Hugging her.) These are melting moments. I'm very fond of my wife, I must have a dance.
Judy.Agreed. (Dancing.)
Punch.Get out of the way, you don't dance well enough for me. (Hits her on the nose.) Go and fetch the baby, and mind and take care of it and not hurt it. (Judy goes off.)
Judy.(Coming back with the baby.)
Take care of the baby while I go and cook the dumplings.
Punch.(Striking Judy with his hand.) Get out of the way! I'll take care of the baby (and Judy goes out).
Punch.(Sits down and sings to the baby.)
"Hush a-bye baby on the tree top,When the wind blows the cradle will rock;When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,Down comes the baby, cradle and all."
(The baby cries and Punch throws it up and down violently.)
Punch.What a cross child! I can't abear cross children. (Shakes the baby and pretends that he is about to kill it, and finally throws it out of the window.)
Enter Judy.
Judy.Where is the baby?
PUNCH IS EXECUTED.
Punch.(In a lemoncholy tone.) I have had a misfortune; the child was so terrible cross I throwed it out of the window, I did. (Lamentation of Judy for her dear child. She goes into asterisks, and then excites and fetches a cudgel, and commences beating Punch over the head.)Punch.Don't be cross, my dear, I didn't go to do it.Judy.I'll pay yer for a throwin' the child out of the winder. (She keeps a beatin him on the blessed head with the stick, but Punch snatches the stick away, and commences a smashin of her blessed head.)Judy.(Screaming like hanythink.) I'll go to the Constable and have you locked up.Punch.Go to the devil. I don't care where you go. Get out of the way. (Judy goes hoff, and Punch sings, "Par Excellence," or, "Ten Little Indians." N.B. All before is sentimental, but this here's comic. Punch goes through his roo-too-to-rooey, and in comes the Beadle hall in red.)
Punch.(In a lemoncholy tone.) I have had a misfortune; the child was so terrible cross I throwed it out of the window, I did. (Lamentation of Judy for her dear child. She goes into asterisks, and then excites and fetches a cudgel, and commences beating Punch over the head.)
Punch.Don't be cross, my dear, I didn't go to do it.
Judy.I'll pay yer for a throwin' the child out of the winder. (She keeps a beatin him on the blessed head with the stick, but Punch snatches the stick away, and commences a smashin of her blessed head.)
Judy.(Screaming like hanythink.) I'll go to the Constable and have you locked up.
Punch.Go to the devil. I don't care where you go. Get out of the way. (Judy goes hoff, and Punch sings, "Par Excellence," or, "Ten Little Indians." N.B. All before is sentimental, but this here's comic. Punch goes through his roo-too-to-rooey, and in comes the Beadle hall in red.)
Then the "Clown" and "Jim Crow," the "Doctor," "Jack Ketch," the hangman, with various characters, follow each other in quick succession and enact their absurdities to the intense delight of the "juveniles," as the showman, in his printed book of the play calls the children. Punch is tried and convicted of murder, and being sentenced to death, is finally hung by Jack Ketch, at Newgate, as a punishment for his crimes, and is then placed in a coffin and given to be dissected.
All through these performances I have frequently noticed that the child spectators sympathized with Punch,—who is certainly a most notorious criminal if we are to judge by his actions on the stage of the Punch and Judy show,—and they always applauded when the Beadle got the worst of the fight.
It is a strange instinct, that which rises and glows in the breast of a child,—this resistance to the spirit or personification of authority.
The same instinct in the full-grown man, draws a mob of ragged blouses after a Rochefort, in the streets of Paris, and builds barricades from which they fire upon the hireling soldiery of a Bonaparte.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND NATIONAL GALLERY.
N Great Russell street, Bloomsbury square, is the British Museum, one of the chief glories of the English metropolis, and an institution of which every Londoner is deservedly proud. There is, perhaps, no finer collection of curiosities and antiquities, and the nation has been for a century gathering the tributes of Science, Art, and Antiquity together in this vast building, which covers, with grounds and outbuildings, an area of seven acres.
The first purchase for the collection was made in 1750, when Sir Hans Sloane, a great collector and scientific man, died, leaving a will, in which he suggested that his collection which cost him £50,000 should be bought by Parliament for £20,000. This offer was accepted, and an act was passed purchasing Sir Hans Sloane's "library of books, drawings, manuscripts, prints, medals, seals, cameos, and intaglios, precious stones, agates, jaspers, vessels of agate, crystals, mathematical instruments, pictures, &c." Thus was laid the first foundation of the now world famous British Museum. By the same act a purchase was made of the Harleian Library of about 7,000 rare volumes of rolls, charters, and manuscripts, to which were added the Cottonian Library, and the library of Major Arthur Edwards. A lottery was devised, from which £100,000 was realized, and the collections were paid for from this fund, as well as the sum of £10,250 which was paid to Lord Halifax for Montague House, in which the museum was then located, and on whichsite the present building has been erected. The additional sum of £12,873 was paid for the repairs of Montague House, and a fund was also set apart for its taxes, salaries of officers, and Trustees, who were chosen from the best and noblest in the land, and in 1759 the Museum was opened to the public.
THE READING ROOM AND ITS OCCUPANTS.
The present lofty and imposing building was thirty years in construction, although the Museum was all that time open to the public, the building being erected piecemeal. The main buildings form a quadrangle with spacious and lofty galleries and courts. The entrances to the buildings are by magnificent staircases of stone, and the portico is adorned with giant figures and groups of sculpture.
Even in the old Egyptian days, no greater masses of stone were ever used than those which have been placed in the grand flight of steps of the main facade. There are twelve stone steps, 120 feet in width, terminating with pedestals, on which are the groups of sculpture. There are 800 huge stones in the edifice, weighing from five to nine tons each.
In the pediment, on the main front, are typified in storied stone, Man, Religion, Paganism, Music, the Drama, Poetry, the Patriarchs, Civilization, Science, Mathematics, and other allegorical figures. The entire buildings have cost upward of £1,000,000. The principal doorway is really majestic, being twenty-four feet high and ten feet wide.
The Reading-Room of the Library contains 1,250,000 cubic feet of space, the dome being 140 feet in diameter and 106 feet high. In this vast room an echo is heard like the sound of a trumpet, and on its shelves, and in contiguous alcoves, are 800,000 volumes of books upon every known subject and in every known language. This room cost £150,000. 4,200 tons of iron were used in the construction of the dome alone. There is accommodation for 300 readers, each person having a desk and table in a space of four feet three inches.
There is a great silence in this vast room where every one seems bent on study. The very doorkeepers who take your hat and umbrella, have a studious look. Every visitor presentshis ticket of admission, and is registered for the benefit of the statistics of the Kingdom. Scores of men who have a taste for literature and reading, and no money to buy books, come here, and, during lunch-hours, those who are anxious to study, and do not wish to leave their seats, may be seen taking from under their tables light luncheons, kidney-pies, and sandwiches, of which they partake with that peculiar shamefacedness which is always observable in people who eat in public places.
There is a member of Parliament in his natty suit, and with a heavy watch-chain, who has gotten him down an old rusty tome, from which he is cramming with great earnestness for the next debate. Last night he had never heard of the subject of which he is reading, and just now he is full of it, and so puzzled with the wealth of the material before him that he does not know at which end to begin.
There is an old gentleman, in threadbare clothes, and worn cuffs, who has a very mild and placid face, and blue bulbous eyes. The table before him is strewn with old, worn volumes, bound with parchment and sheep-skin covers, and every time he turns a leaf a cloud of powdered dust ascends to his nostrils, and he is nearly suffocated. It is easy to see from this man's soft and fixed look that he is a monomaniac upon some subject, and that he is now settled for the day. Ah! what a sigh of relief from the old codger. He has, after great trouble, secured in his mind the point in dispute, and now he is at work rapidly scratching away at his notes. Looking over his shoulder I can see that the old fellow has a number of works on the subject of Heraldry before him, and he is, of course, tracing some mystic pedigree to the Flood, or further back, perhaps for the satisfaction of a butcher or tailor who may be in want of an escutcheon and a bar sinister in his shield.
In 1827, Sir Joseph Banks presented his botanical collection, and 66,000 valuable volumes. In 1837, the Prints and Drawings, the Geology and Zoology departments were formed, and in 1857, the Department of Mineralogy. The Museum is divided into departments of Printed Books, Manuscripts, Antiquities, Art, Botany, Prints, and Drawings, Zoology, Paleontology, Mineralogy, and Sculpture, each under the charge of an "Under-Librarian."