University of Virginia Library

OF THE COSTER-GIRLS.

The costermongers, taken as a body, entertain
the most imperfect idea of the sanctity of mar-
riage. To their undeveloped minds it merely
consists in the fact of a man and woman living
together, and sharing the gains they may each
earn by selling in the street. The father and
mother of the girl look upon it as a convenient
means of shifting the support of their child over
to another's exertions; and so thoroughly do
they believe this to be the end and aim of
matrimony, that the expense of a church cere-
mony is considered as a useless waste of money,
and the new pair are received by their com-
panions as cordially as if every form of law and
religion had been complied with.

The notions of morality among these people
agree strangely, as I have said, with those of
many savage tribes — indeed, it would be curious
if it were otherwise. They are a part of the
Nomades of England, neither knowing nor caring
for the enjoyments of home. The hearth, which
is so sacred a symbol to all civilized races as
being the spot where the virtues of each suc-
ceeding generation are taught and encouraged,
has no charms to them. The tap-room is the
father's chief abiding place; whilst to the
mother the house is only a better kind of tent.
She is away at the stall, or hawking her goods
from morning till night, while the children are
left to play away the day in the court or alley,
and pick their morals out of the gutter. So
long as the limbs gain strength the parent cares
for nothing else. As the young ones grow up,
their only notions of wrong are formed by what
the policeman will permit them to do. If we,
who have known from babyhood the kindly
influences of a home, require, before we are
thrust out into the world to get a living for our-
selves, that our perceptions of good and evil
should be quickened and brightened (the same
as our perceptions of truth and falsity) by the
experience and counsel of those who are wiser
and better than ourselves, — if, indeed, it needed
a special creation and example to teach the best
and strongest of us the law of right, how bitterly
must the children of the street-folk require tui-
tion, training, and advice, when from their very
cradles (if, indeed, they ever knew such luxuries)
they are doomed to witness in their parents,
whom they naturally believe to be their supe-
riors, habits of life in which passion is the sole
rule of action, and where every appetite of our
animal nature is indulged in without the least
restraint.

I say thus much because I am anxious to
make others feel, as I do myself, that we are
the culpable parties in these matters. That
they poor things should do as they do is but
human nature — but that we should allow them
to remain thus destitute of every blessing
vouchsafed to ourselves — that we should wil-
lingly share what we enjoy with our brethren
at the Antipodes, and yet leave those who are
nearer and who, therefore, should be dearer to
us, to want even the commonest moral neces-
saries is a paradox that gives to the zeal of our
Christianity a strong savour of the chicanery of
Cant.

The costermongers strongly resemble the
North American Indians in their conduct to
their wives. They can understand that it is the
duty of the woman to contribute to the happi-
ness of the man, but cannot feel that there is a
reciprocal duty from the man to the woman.
The wife is considered as an inexpensive servant,
and the disobedience of a wish is punished with
blows. She must work early and late, and to
the husband must be given the proceeds of her
labour. Often when the man is in one of his
drunken fits — which sometimes last two or three
days continuously — she must by her sole ex-
ertions find food for herself and him too. To
live in peace with him, there must be no mur-
muring, no tiring under work, no fancied cause
for jealousy — for if there be, she is either beaten
into submission or cast adrift to begin life again —
as another's leavings.

The story of one coster girl's life may be taken
as a type of the many. When quite young she
is placed out to nurse with some neighbour,
the mother — if a fond one — visiting the child at
certain periods of the day, for the purpose of
feeding it, or sometimes, knowing the round she
has to make, having the infant brought to her
at certain places, to be "suckled." As soon as
it is old enough to go alone, the court is its
play-ground, the gutter its school-room, and
under the care of an elder sister the little one
passes the day, among children whose mothers
like her own are too busy out in the streets help-
ing to get the food, to be able to mind the family
at home. When the girl is strong enough, she
in her turn is made to assist the mother by
keeping guard over the younger children, or, if
there be none, she is lent out to carry about a
baby, and so made to add to the family income
by gaining her sixpence weekly. Her time is
from the earliest years fully occupied; indeed,
her parents cannot afford to keep her without
doing and getting something. Very few of the
children receive the least education. "The
parents," I am told, "never give their minds to
learning, for they say, `What's the use of it?
that won't yarn a gal a living."' Everything is
sacrificed — as, indeed, under the circumstances
it must be — in the struggle to live — aye! and to
live merely. Mind, heart, soul, are all absorbed
in the belly. The rudest form of animal life,
physiologists tell us, is simply a locomotive
stomach. Verily, it would appear as if our
social state had a tendency to make the highest
animal sink into the lowest.

At about seven years of age the girls first go
into the streets to sell. A shallow-basket is
given to them, with about two shillings for stock-
money, and they hawk, according to the time of
year, either oranges, apples, or violets; some
begin their street education with the sale of
water-cresses. The money earned by this means
is strictly given to the parents. Sometimes —

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though rarely — a girl who has been unfortunate
during the day will not dare to return home at
night, and then she will sleep under some dry
arch or about some market, until the morrow's
gains shall ensure her a safe reception and
shelter in her father's room.

The life of the coster-girls is as severe as that
of the boys. Between four and five in the
morning they have to leave home for the mar-
kets, and sell in the streets until about nine.
Those that have more kindly parents, return then
to breakfast, but many are obliged to earn the
morning's meal for themselves. After break-
fast, they generally remain in the streets until
about ten o'clock at night; many having nothing
during all that time but one meal of bread and
butter and coffee, to enable them to support the
fatigue of walking from street to street with
the heavy basket on their heads. In the course
of a day, some girls eat as much as a pound of
bread, and very seldom get any meat, unless it
be on a Sunday.

There are many poor families that, without
the aid of these girls, would be forced into the
workhouse. They are generally of an affection-
ate disposition, and some will perform acts of
marvellous heroism to keep together the little
home. It is not at all unusual for mere chil-
dren of fifteen to walk their eight or ten miles
a day, carrying a basket of nearly two hundred
weight on their heads. A journey to Woolwich
and back, or to the towns near London, is often
undertaken to earn the 1s. 6d. their parents are
anxiously waiting for at home.

Very few of these girls are married to the
men they afterwards live with. Their courtship
is usually a very short one; for, as one told me,
"the life is such a hard one, that a girl is ready
to get rid of a little of the labour at any price."
The coster-lads see the girls at market, and if
one of them be pretty, and a boy take a fancy
to her, he will make her bargains for her, and
carry her basket home. Sometimes a coster
working his rounds will feel a liking for a wench
selling her goods in the street, and will leave
his barrow to go and talk with her. A girl
seldom takes up with a lad before she is sixteen,
though some of them, when barely fifteen or
even fourteen, will pair off. They court for a
time, going to raffles and "gaffs" together, and
then the affair is arranged. The girl tells her
parents "she's going to keep company with
so-and-so," packs up what things she has, and
goes at once, without a word of remonstrance
from either father or mother. A furnished
room, at about 4s. a week, is taken, and the
young couple begin life The lad goes out as
usual with his barrow, and the girl goes out
with her basket, often working harder for her
lover than she had done for her parents. They
go to market together, and at about nine o'clock
her day's selling begins. Very often she will
take out with her in the morning what food she
requires during the day, and never return home
until eleven o'clock at night.

The men generally behave very cruelly to
the girls they live with. They are as faithful
to them as if they were married, but they are
jealous in the extreme. To see a man talking
to their girl is sufficient to ensure the poor
thing a beating. They sometimes ill-treat
them horribly — most unmercifully indeed —
nevertheless the girls say they cannot help
loving them still, and continue working for
them, as if they experienced only kindness at
their hands. Some of the men are gentler and
more considerate in their treatment of them,
but by far the larger portion are harsh and
merciless. Often when the Saturday night's
earnings of the two have been large, the man
will take the entire money, and as soon as the
Sunday's dinner is over, commence drinking
hard, and continue drunk for two or three days
together, until the funds are entirely exhausted.
The women never gamble; they say, "it gives
them no excitement." They prefer, if they
have a spare moment in the evening, sitting
near the fire making up and patching their
clothes. "Ah, sir," said a girl to me, "a neat
gown does a deal with a man; he always likes
a girl best when everybody else likes her too."
On a Sunday they clean their room for the
week and go for a treat, if they can persuade
their young man to take them out in the after-
noon, either to Chalk Farm or Battersea Fields
— "where there's plenty of life."

After a girl has once grown accustomed to a
street-life, it is almost impossible to wean her
from it. The muscular irritability begotten by
continued wandering makes her unable to rest
for any time in one place, and she soon, if put
to any settled occupation, gets to crave for the
severe exercise she formerly enjoyed. The
least restraint will make her sigh after the
perfect liberty of the coster's "roving life." As
an instance of this I may relate a fact that
has occurred within the last six months. A
gentleman of high literary repute, struck with
the heroic strugglings of a coster Irish girl to
maintain her mother, took her to his house,
with a view of teaching her the duties of a
servant. At first the transition was a painful
one to the poor thing. Having travelled bare-
foot through the streets since a mere child, the
pressure of shoes was intolerable to her, and in
the evening or whenever a few minutes' rest
could be obtained, the boots were taken off, for
with them on she could enjoy no ease. The
perfect change of life, and the novelty of being
in a new place, reconciled her for some time to
the loss of her liberty. But no sooner did she
hear from her friends, that sprats were again
in the market, than, as if there were some
magical influence in the fish, she at once
requested to be freed from the confinement, and
permitted to return to her old calling.

Such is the history of the lower class of girls,
though this lower class, I regret to say, consti-
tutes by far the greater portion of the whole.
Still I would not for a moment have it inferred
that all are bad. There are many young girls
getting their living, or rather helping to get

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the living of others in the streets, whose good-
ness, considering the temptations and hardships
besetting such an occupation, approximates to
the marvellous. As a type of the more pru-
dent class of coster girls, I would cite the
following narrative received from the lips of
a young woman in answer to a series of
questions.