 | OF THE STREET-IRISH. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 |  |
OF THE HISTORY OF SOME IRISH STREET-
SELLERS.
In order that the following statements might be
as truthful as possible, I obtained permission to
use the name of a Roman Catholic clergyman,
to whom I am indebted for much valuable
information touching this part of my subject.
A young woman, of whose age it was not easy
to form a conjecture, her features were so em-
browned by exposure to the weather, and per-
haps when I saw her a little swollen from cold,
gave me the following account as to her living.
Her tone and manner betrayed indifference to
the future, caused perhaps by ignorance, — for
uneducated persons I find are apt to look on
the future as if it must needs be but a repe-
tition of the present, while the past in many
instances is little more than a blank to them.
This young woman said, her brogue being little
perceptible, though she spoke thickly:
"I live by keepin' this fruit stall. It's a poor
livin' when I see how others live. Yes, in
thruth, sir, but it's thankful I am for to be able
[Description: 915EAF. Page 116.]
My father and mother are both did. God be
gracious to their sowls! They was evicted. The
family of us was. The thatch of the bit o' home
was tuk off above our hids, and we were lift to the
wide worruld — yis, indeed, sir, and in the open
air too. The rint wasn't paid and it couldn't be
paid, and so we had to face the wither. It was
a sorrowful time. But God was good, and so
was the neighbours. And when we saw the
praste, he was a frind to us. And we came to
this counthry, though I'd always heard it called
a black counthry. Sure, an' there's much in it
to indhure. There's goin's on it, sir, that the
praste, God rewarrud him! wouldn't like to see.
There's bad ways. I won't talk about thim,
and I'm sure you are too much of a gintlemin
to ask me; for if you know Father — , that
shows you are the best of gintlemin, sure. It
was the eviction that brought us here. I don't
know about where we was just; not in what
county; nor parish. I was so young whin we
lift the land. I belave I'm now 19, perhaps
only 18" (she certainly looked much older,
but I have often noticed that of her class). "I
can't be more, I think, for sure an its only
5 or 6 years since we left Watherford and come
to Bristol. I'm sure it was Watherford, and a
beautiful place it is, and I know it was Bristol
we come to. We walked all the long way to
London. My parints died of the cholera, and
I live with mysilf, but my aunt lodges me and
sees to me. She sills in the sthreets too. I
don't make 7d. a day. I may make 6d. There's
a good many young payple I know is now
sillin' in the streets becase they was evicted
in their own counthry. I suppose they had no
where ilse to come to. I'm nivir out of a night.
I sleep with my aunt, and we keep to oursilves
sure. I very sildom taste mate, but perhaps
I do oftener than before we was evicted — glory
be to God."
One Irish street-seller I saw informed me
that she was a "widdy wid three childer."
Her husband died about four years since.
She had then five children, and was near her
confinement with another. Since the death of
her husband she had lost three of her children;
a boy about twelve years died of stoppage on
his lungs, brought on, she said, through being
in the streets, and shouting so loud "to get sale
of the fruit." She has been in Clare-street,
Clare-market, seven years with a fruit stall.
In the summer she sells green fruit, which she
purchases at Covent-garden. When the nuts,
oranges, &c., come in season, she furnishes
her stall with that kind of fruit, and continues
to sell them until the spring salad comes in.
During the spring and summer her weekly
average income is about 5s., but the remaining
portion of the year her income is not more
than 3s. 6d. weekly, so that taking the year
through, her average weekly income is about
4s. 3a.; out of this she pays 1s. 6d. a week rent,
leaving only 2s. 9d. a week to find necessary
comforts for herself and family. For fuel the
children go to the market and gather up the
waste walnuts, bring them home and dry them,
and these, with a pennyworth of coal and coke,
serve to warm their chilled feet and hands. They
have no bedstead, but in one corner of a room is
a flock bed upon the floor, with an old sheet,
blanket, and quilt to cover them at this incle-
ment season. There is neither chair nor table;
a stool serves for the chair, and two pieces of
board upon some baskets do duty for a table,
and an old penny tea-canister for a candlestick.
She had parted with every article of furniture
to get food for her family. She received nothing
from the parish, but depended upon the sale of
her fruit for her living.
The Irishmen who are in this trade are also
very poor; and I learned that both Irishmen
and Irishwomen left the occupation now and
then, and took to begging, as a more profitable
calling, often going begging this month and
fruit-selling the next. This is one of the
causes which prompt the London costermon-
gers' dislike of the Irish. "They'll beg them-
selves into a meal, and work us out of one,"
said an English coster to me. Some of them
are, however, less "poverty-struck" (a word
in common use among the costermongers);
but these for the most part are men who have
been in the trade for some years, and have got
regular "pitches."
The woman who gave me the following state-
ment seemed about twenty-two or twenty-three.
She was large-boned, and of heavy figure and
deportment. Her complexion and features were
both coarse, but her voice had a softness, even in
its broadest brogue, which is not very frequent
among poor Irishwomen. The first sentence she
uttered seems to me tersely to embody a deplor-
able history of the poverty of a day. It was
between six and seven in the evening when I
saw the poor creature: —
"Sure, thin, sir, it's thrippince I've taken to-
day, and tuppince is to pay for my night's lodg-
in'. I shall do no more good to-night, and shall
only stay in the cowld, if I stay in it, for nothing.
I'm an orphand, sir," (she three or four times
alluded to this circumstance,) "and there's no-
body to care for me but God, glory be to his
name! I came to London to join my brother,
that had come over and did will, and he sint for
me, but whin I got here I couldn't find him in
it anyhow. I don't know how long that's ago.
It may be five years; it may be tin; but" (she
added, with the true eloquence of beggary,)
"sure, thin, sir, I had no harrut to keep count,
if I knew how. My father and mother wasn't
able to keep me, nor to keep thimsilves in
Ireland, and so I was sint over here. They was
counthry payple. I don't know about their
landlorrud. They died not long afther I came
here. I don't know what they died of, but sure
it was of the will of God, and they hadn't much
to make them love this worruld; no more have
I. Would I like to go back to my own counthry?
Will, thin, what would be the use? I sleep
at a lodging-house, and it's a dacint place.
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that is, in the women's part. I pay 1s. a week,
that's 2d. a night, for I'm not charged for Sun-
days. I live on brid, and 'taties and salt, and a
herrin' sometimes. I niver taste beer, and not
often tay, but I sit here all day, and I feel the
hunger this day and that day. It goes off though,
if I have nothin' to ate. I don't know why, but
I won't deny the goodness of God to bring such
a thing about. I have lived for a day on a pinny,
sir: a ha'pinny for brid, and a ha'pinny for a
herrin', or two herrin's for a ha'pinny, and 'taties
for the place of brid. I've changed apples for a
herrin' with a poor man, God rewarrud him.
Sometimes I make on to 6d. a day, and some-
times I have made 1s. 6d., but I think that I
don't make 5d. a day — arrah, no, thin, sir! one
day with the other, and I don't worruk on Sunday,
not often. If I've no mate to ate, I'd rather rist.
I never miss mass on a Sunday. A lady gives
me a rag sometimes, but the bitther time's
comin'. If I was sick I don't know what I'd
do, but I would sind for the praste, and he'd
counsil me. I could read a little oncte, but
I can't now."
| OF THE STREET-IRISH. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 | |