 | OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MANUFACTURED ARTICLES. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 |  |
OF THE LIFE OF A BLIND BOOT-LACE SELLER.
The blind boot lace-seller who gave me the fol-
lowing history of his life was the original of the
portrait given in No. 17. He was a tall, strongly-
built man. In face he was ghastly, his cheek
bones were sharp and high, his nose flat to his
face, and his eyes were so deeply sunk in that he
had more the appearance of a death's head than
of a living man. His shirt was scrupulously
clean. He wore a bright red cotton neckerchief
and a plaid waistcoat of many colours. His
dog accompanied him and never left his master's
side one moment.
"It's very sorrowful — very sorrowful indeed
to hear that," said the boot-lace seller to me, on
my reading him the account of the blind needle-
seller; "it touches me much to hear that. But
you see I don't grieve for the loss of my sight as
he do, poor man. I don't remember ever seeing
any object. If there was a thing with many
colours in it, I could dissarn the highest colour.
I couldn't tell one from another, but only the
highest.
"I was born in Northumberland," he said,
"about five-and-fifty years ago. My father was
a grocer and had 1,000l. worth of freehold property
besides his business, which was very large for a
small town; his was the principal shop, and in
the general line. He had a cart of his own, in
which he attended market. I was very comfort-
ably brought up, never wanted for nothing, and had
my mother lived I should have had an independ-
ent fortune. At five years old, while mother
was still alive, I caught the small pox. I had
four sisters and one brother, and we all six had it
at once; that was before the vaccination was
properly established. I've heerd said that father
did not want to have us inoculated, because of
the people coming backwards and forwards to the
shop. I only wish vaccination had been in vogue
then as it is now, and I shouldn't have lost my
eyes. God bless the man who brought it up, I
say; people doesn't know what they've got to
thank him for. Well, all my sisters and brothers
had not a mark upon them. It laid hold of only
me. They couldn't lay a finger upon me, they
was obligated to lift me up in one of my father's
shirts, by holding the corners of it like a sheet. As
soon as ever the pock began to decay it took
away my eyes altogether. I didn't lose both my
eyeballs till about twenty years after that, though
my sight was gone for all but the shadow of day-
light and any high colours. At sixteen years of
age my left eye bursted; I suffered terribly then —
oh terribly! yes, that I did. The black-and-white
like all mixed together, the pock came right
through the star of the eye the doctor said; and
when I was five-and-twenty my other eye-ball
bursted, and then my eyes was quite out of my
head. Till that time I could see a little bit; I
could tell the daylight, and I could see the moon,
but not the shape of it. I never could see a star,
and do you know I grieved about the loss of that
little bit of sight as much as if I was losing the
whole of it. As my eye-ball sloughed day by
day, I could see the light going away by little,
every day till the week's end. When I looked at
the daylight just before it all went, I could see
the light look as red as fire — as red as blood;
and when it all left me, oh, I was dreadful sor-
rowful, I thought I was lost altogether. But, I
shouldn't have been so bad off, as I said, if
mother had lived, but she died when I was about
six year old. I didn't care much about her, indeed I
took a dreadful dislike to her. I heerd her say
one day to a person in the shop, that she
would sooner see me dead and buried than
be as I was, but now I know that it was her
fondness for me. Mother catched a cold, and
died after six day's illness. When she was gone,
father got to neglect his business. He had no one
then to attend to it, and he took and shut up the
shop. He lost heart, you see. He took and
turned all the tenants out of his property, and
furnished all the rooms of a large house suitable
for the quality that used to come to the town to
bathe. He mortgaged the place for 250l. to buy
the furniture, and that was the ruin of him.
Eighteen years afterwards the lawyers got the
better of him, and all the family was turned out
of the door without a penny. My father they'd
put in jail before. He died a few years afterwards
in the workhouse. When the family was turned
[Description: 915EAF. Page 406.]
sea, and my eldest sister in sarvice; so me and my
three sisters was sent in the wide world without
the means of getting a crust or a place to put our
heads in. All my sisters after that got into
sarvice, and I went to drive some coal carts at
North Shields. The coal carts was father's, and
they was all he had left out of his property; so I
used to go to Wall's End and fill the carts, then
take them down to North Shields and sell them
at the people's doors. We never used to sell less
than the load. I did all this, blind as I was,
without a person to guide, and continued at it
night and day for about fifteen year. It was
well known to the whole country side. I was
the talk for miles round. They couldn't believe
I was blind; though they see my eyes was gone,
still they couldn't hardly believe. Then, after the
fifteen year, me and my father had a complete
fall out. He took an advantage of my sister. He
had borrowed 20l. of her, and when he could he
wouldn't pay her. He behaved as bad as father
could, and then I broke with him." (He then
went over the whole story, and was affected,
even to speechlessness, at the remembrance of his
family troubles. Into these there is no necessity
to enter here; suffice it, the blind man appears
to have behaved very nobly.) "I came away
and went to my brother, who was well of at
Hull; when I got there, I found he had gone to
Russia and died there that very spring. While I
was on my way to Hull, I used to go to sleep at the
lodging-houses for travellers. I had never been in
one before, and there I got to think, from what I
heerd, that a roving life was a fine pleasant one.
The very first lodging-house I went into was one
in Durham, and there persons as was coming the
same road persuaded me to go and beg with them,
but I couldn't cheek it; it was too near hand at
home. We came on to Darlington, that was 18
miles further, that day. They still kept company
with me, and wanted me to beg, but I wouldn't;
I couldn't face it. I thought people would know
me. The next day we started on our way to
Northallerton, and then my few shillings was all
gone; so that night we went to seek relief, and
got a pennyworth of milk, and a penny loaf each
and our bed. The parish gave us a ticket to a
lodging-house. The next morning we started from
Northallerton, and then I was very hungry; all I
had the day before was the pennyworth of bread
I got from the parish. Then as we got about a
mile out of the town, there was a row of houses,
and the Scotchman who was with me says, `If
ye'll gang up wi' me, I'll speak for ye.' Well,
we went up and got 3d., and plenty of bread and
butter; almost every house we got something at;
then I was highly delighted; thinks I, this is a
business — and so I did. We shared with the
other man who had come on the road with us, and
after that we started once more, and then I was
all eager to go on with the same business.
You see I'd never had no pleasure, and it
seemed to me like a new world — to be
able to get victuals without doing anything —
instead of slaving as I'd been with a couple
of carts and horses at the coal-pits all the time.
I didn't think the country was half so big, and
you couldn't credit the pleasure I felt in going
about it. I felt as if I didn't care for nothing; it
was so beautiful to be away there quite free, with-
out any care in the world, for I could see plainly
I could always get the best of victuals, and the
price of my lodgings. There's no part in all
England like Yorkshire for living. We used to
go to all the farm-houses, we wouldn't miss one
if it was half a mile off the road; if the Scotchman
who was with me could only see a road he'd
take me up it, and we got nice bits of pie and
meat, and bread and cake, indeed as much as
would serve four people, when we got to the
lodging-house at night and a few shillings beside.
I soon got not to care about the loss of my brother.
At last we got to make so much money that I
thought it was made to chuck about the streets.
We got it so easy, you see. It was only 4s. or
5s., but then I was only a flatty or I could have
made 14s. or 15s. at least. This was in Borough-
bridge, and there at a place called, I think,
Bridely-hill, there was a lodging-house without
never a bed in it at all; but only straw littered
on the ground, and here I found upwards of sixty
or seventy, all tramps, and living in different ways,
pattering, and thieving, and singing, and all sorts;
and that night I got to think it was the finest
scene I had ever known. I grew pleaseder, and
pleaseder, with the life, and wondered how any
one could follow any other. There was no drunken-
ness, but it was so new and strange, and I'd never
known nothing of life before, that I was bewil-
dered, like, with over-joy at it. Then I soon got to
think I'd have the summer's pleasure out and
wouldn't go near Hull till the back end of the year,
for it was the month of May, that what I'm
talking about took place; and so things went on.
I never thought of home, or sisters, or anything,
indeed. I was so over-joyed that I could think
of nothing else. Whenever I got to a new country
it seemed like getting into a new nation, and
when I heard we were close upon a new place I
used to long and long to get into it. At last I
left the Scotchman and took up with an old sailor,
a man-of-warsman, who was coming up to London
to get his pension, and he was a regular `cadger'
like the other who had put me `fly to the dodge,'
though none of us wer'nt `fly' to nothing then.
I can't tell you, I wanted to, how I longed to be in
town, and, as I came through the streets with him, I
didn't know whether I carried the streets or they
carried me. You see I had heard people talk about
London in North Shields, and I thought there was
no poor people there at all — none but ladies and
gentlemen and sailors. In London the sailor drew
his pension, and he and me got robbed, and then
the sailor left me, and then I started off without
a penny into the country; and at Stratford-le-Bow
I began, for the first time, to say, `Pity the poor
blind.' Up to this time I had never axed no one
— never spoke, indeed — the cadgers who had been
with me had done this for me, and glad to have
the chance of sharing with me. A blind man
can get a guide at any place, because they know
[Description: 915EAF. Page 407.]
Stratford-le-Bow, and then started on my way to
Romford; and there, in the lodging-house, I met a
blind man, who took me in partnership with him,
and larnt me my business complete — that he just
did, and since then I've been following it, and
that's about two or three and twenty year ago.
Since I've been in London, and that's fourteen
year, I've lived very regular, always had a place,
and attended my church. If it hadn't been for
the lodging-houses I should never, may be, have
been as I am; though, I must confess, I always
had a desire to find out travelling, but couldn't
get hold of any one to put me in the way of it.
I longed for a roving life and to shake a loose leg,
still I couldn't have done much else after my
quarrel with my father. My sister had offered to
lend me money enough to buy a horse and cart
for myself, but I didn't like that, and thought I'd
get it of my brother at Hull; and that and the
padding kens is solely the cause of my being as I
am; and since I first travelled there's more now
than ever — double and treble as many."
| OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MANUFACTURED ARTICLES. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 | |