39. CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE BOOBLE-ALLEYS OF THE TOWN.
The same sights that are to be met with along the dock
walls at noon, in a less degree, though diversified with other
scenes, are continually encountered in the narrow streets
where the sailor boarding-houses are kept.
In the evening, especially when the sailors are gathered
in great numbers, these streets present a most singular spectacle,
the entire population of the vicinity being seemingly
turned into them. Hand-organs, fiddles, and cymbals, plied
by strolling musicians, mix with the songs of the seamen,
the babble of women and children, and the groaning and
whining of beggars. From the various boarding-houses,
each distinguished by gilded emblems outside—an anchor, a
crown, a ship, a windlass, or a dolphin—proceeds the noise
of revelry and dancing; and from the open casements lean
young girls and old women, chattering and laughing with
the crowds in the middle of the street. Every moment
strange greetings are exchanged between old sailors who
chance to stumble upon a shipmate, last seen in Calcutta
or Savannah; and the invariable courtesy that takes place
upon these occasions, is to go to the next spirit-vault, and
drink each other's health.
There are particular paupers who frequent particular sections
of these streets, and who, I was told, resented the intrusion
of mendicants from other parts of the town.
Chief among them was a white-haired old man, stone-blind;
who was led up and down through the long tumult
by a woman holding a little sancer to receive contributions.
This old man sang, or rather chanted, certain words in a
peculiarly long-drawn, guttural manner, throwing back his
head, and turning up his sightless eyeballs to the sky. His
chant was a lamentation upon his infirmity; and at the
time it produced the same effect upon me, that my first
reading of Milton's Invocation to the Sun did, years afterward.
I can not recall it all; but it was something like
this, drawn out in an endless groan—
“Here goes the blind old man; blind, blind, blind; no
more will he see sun nor moon—no more see sun nor moon!”
And thus would he pass through the middle of the street;
the woman going on in advance, holding his hand, and dragging
him through all obstructions; now and then leaving
him standing, while she went among the crowd soliciting
coppers.
But one of the most curious features of the scene is the
number of sailor ballad-singers, who, after singing their
verses, hand you a printed copy, and beg you to buy. One
of these persons, dressed like a man-of-war's-man, I observed
every day standing at a corner in the middle of the street.
He had a full, noble voice, like a church-organ; and his
notes rose high above the surrounding din. But the remarkable
thing about this ballad-singer was one of his arms,
which, while singing, he somehow swung vertically round
and round in the air, as if it revolved on a pivot. The
feat was unnaturally unaccountable; and he performed it
with the view of attracting sympathy; since he said that in
falling from a frigate's mast-head to the deck, he had met
with an injury, which had resulted in making his wonderful
arm what it was.
I made the acquaintance of this man, and found him no
common character. He was full of marvelous adventures,
and abounded in terrific stories of pirates and sea murders,
and all sorts of nautical enormities. He was a monomaniac
upon these subjects; he was a Newgate Calendar of the
robberies and assassinations of the day, happening in the
sailor quarters of the town; and most of his ballads were
upon kindred subjects. He composed many of his own
verses, and had them printed for sale on his own account.
To show how expeditious he was at this business, it may be
mentioned, that one evening on leaving the dock to go to
supper, I perceived a crowd gathered about the
Old Fort
Tavern; and mingling with the rest, I learned that a
woman of the town had just been killed at the bar by a
drunken Spanish sailor from Cadiz. The murderer was
carried off by the police before my eyes, and the very next
morning the ballad-singer with the miraculous arm, was
singing the tragedy in front of the boarding-houses, and
handing round printed copies of the song, which, of course,
were eagerly bought up by the seamen.
This passing allusion to the murder will convey some
idea of the events which take place in the lowest and most
abandoned neighborhoods frequented by sailors in Liverpool.
The pestilent lanes and alleys which, in their vocabulary,
go by the names of Rotten-row, Gibraltar-place, and Booblealley,
are putrid with vice and crime; to which, perhaps,
the round globe does not furnish a parallel. The sooty and
begrimed bricks of the very houses have a reeking, Sodom-like,
and murderous look; and well may the shroud of coal-smoke,
which hangs over this part of the town, more than
any other, attempt to hide the enormities here practiced.
These are the haunts from which sailors sometimes disappear
forever; or issue in the morning, robbed naked, from the
broken door-ways. These are the haunts in which cursing,
gambling, pickpocketing, and common iniquities, are virtues
too lofty for the infected gorgons and hydras to practice.
Propriety forbids that I should enter into details; but kidnappers,
burkers, and resurrectionists are almost saints and
angels to them. They seem leagued together, a company
of miscreant misanthropes, bent upon doing all the malice to
mankind in their power. With sulphur and brimstone they
ought to be burned out of their arches like vermin.
