[-200-]
THE COSTERMONGERS' FREE-AND-EASY.
EVERY class in London has its particular
pleasures. The gay have their theatres - the philanthropic their Exeter Hall -
the wealthy their "ancient concerts" - the costermongers what they
term their sing-song.
I once penetrated into one of these dens. It was situated in
a very low neighbourhood, not far from a gigantic brewery, where you could not
walk a yard scarcely without coming to a public house. The costermongers are a
numerous race. Walk the poor neighbourhoods on a Saturday night, and hear the
cries,-"Chestnuts all 'ot a penny a score," "Three a penny,
Yarmouth bloaters," "Penny a lot fine russets, a penny a lot,"
"Now's your time, fine whelks, a penny a lot." Well, the itinerant
vendors of these delicacies are costermongers. Or in the daytime see the long
carts drawn by donkies loaded with greens and other vegetables, all announced to
the public in stentorian lungs - these men are costermongers. [-201-]
Listen to those boys calling, "Ho, ho, hi, hi,- what do you think of
this here? a penny a bunch, a penny a bunch. Here's your turnips!" Those
boys are costermongers' lads. It is seldom they last long as men. They soon lose
their voice, and how they pick up a living then no one can tell. Their talk is
peculiar. Mr Mayhew tells us their slang consists merely in pronouncing each
word as if spelt backwards. "I say, Curly, will you do a top of reeb"
(pot of beer)? one costermonger may say to another. "It s on doog, Whelkey,
on doog" (no good, no good), the second may reply; "I've
had a regular troseno (bad sort) to-day; I ye been doing dab (bad)
with my tol (lot)-han't made a yennep (penny), s'elp me - ".
"Why, I ye cleared a flatchenore (half a crown) a' ready."
Master Whelkey will answer perhaps, "But kool the esilop (look
at the police), kool him (look at him). Curly: Nommus (be off), I
am going to do the tightner" (have my dinner). Would you know
more of them, come with me.
Just look at the people in this public-house. A more drunken,
dissipated, wretched lot you never saw. There are one or two little tables in
front of the bar and benches, and on these [-202-] benches
are the most wretched men and women possible to imagine. They are drinking gin
and smoking, and all have the appearance of confirmed sots. They are shoemakers
in the neighbourhood, and these women with them are their wives. "Lor'
bless you, sir," exclaims the landlord, "they spend all they has in
drink. They live on a penny roll and a ha'porth of sprats or mussels, and they
never buy any clothes, except once in three or four years, and then they get
some second-hand rubbish." And here, when they are not at work, they sit
spending their money. Are there none to save them ?- none to come here and pluck
these brands from the burning? I know they are short-lived; I see in their pale,
haggard, blotched, and bloated faces premature death. The first touch of illness
will carry them off as rotten leaves fall in November; but ere this be the case,
can you not reveal to them one glimpse of a truer and diviner life? But come
up-stairs into this concert-room, where about a hundred costermongers and
shoemakers are listening to the charms of song. Talk about the refining
influence of music! it is not here you will find such to be the case. The men
and women and lads sitting round these shabby-[-203-]looking
tables have come here to drink, for that is their idea of enjoyment; and whilst
we would not grudge them one particle of mirth, we cannot but regret that their
standard of enjoyment should be so low. The landlord is in the chair, and a
professional man presides at the piano. As to the songs, they are partly
professional and partly by volunteers. I cannot say much for their character.
The costermongers have not very strict notions of meum and tuum; they
are not remarkable for keeping all the commandments; their reverence for the
conventional ideas of decency and propriety is not very profound; their notions
are not peculiarly polished or refined, nor is the language in which they are
clothed, nor the mode in which they are uttered, such as would be recognised in
Belgravia. Dickens makes Mrs General in "Little Dorrit" remark,
"Society never forms opinions, and is never demonstrative." Well, the
costermongers are the reverse of all this, and as the pots of heavy and the
quarterns of juniper are freely quaffed, and the world and its cares are
forgotten, and the company becomes hourly more noisy and hilarious, you will
perceive the truth of my remarks. Anybody sings who likes; sometimes a [-204-]
man, sometimes a female, volunteers a performance, and I am sorry to say
it is not the girls who sing the most delicate songs. The burdens of these songs
are what you might expect. In one you were recommended not to go courting in the
kitchen when the master was at home, but, instead, to choose the "airey."
One song, with a chorus, was devoted to the deeds of "those handsome men,
the French Grenadiers." Another recommended beer as a remedy for low
spirits; and thus the harmony of the evening is continued till twelve, when the
landlord closes his establishment, to the great grief of the few who have any
money left, who would only be too happy to keep it up all night. Let me say a
word about costermonger literature. I see Mr Manby Smith calculates its
pecuniary value at twelve thousand a year. It is wretched in every way, - in
composition, in printing, in cuts, and paper. These street ballads - we are all
familiar with them - are sold by a class of men called patterers, and are
written so as to bear on the events of the day. Thus, at the last Lord Mayor's
day we had a song sung in the streets, of which the following is a specimen:-
[-205-] "Away they go, the high and low,
Such glorious sights was never seen,
But still the London Lord Mayor's
show
Is not as it has former been,
When old Dick Whittington was mayor,
And our forefathers had to go;
They had not got no Peelers there,
To guard great London's Lord Mayor's
show."
And we are told in another verse that-
"They will talk of Russia,
France, and that,
And mention how the money goes;
Each man will eat a pect of sprats,
That's the fashion at the Lord
Mayor's show."
Some of these songs are indecent; almost all of them have a
morbid sympathy with criminals. Thus Redpath in the following lines is almost
made a martyr to his benevolence and Christian life.
"Alas! I am convicted, there a
no one to blame-
I suppose you all know Leopold
Redpath is my name;
I have one consolation, perhaps I ye
more,
All the days of my life I ne'er
injured the poor.
"I procured for the widow and
orphan their bread,
The naked I clothed, and the hungry I
fed;
But still I am sentenced, you must
understand,
Because I had broken the laws of the
land.
"A last fend adieu to my
heart-broken wife-
Leopold Redpath, your husband, a
transported for life;
Providence will protect you, love, do
not deplore,
Since your husband never hurted or
injured the poor
* * * *
[-206-]"In London and Weybridge I in
splendour did dwell,
By the rich and the poor was
respected right well;
But now I m going - oh I where shall I
say -
A convict from England, oh! far, far
away.
* * * * *
"I might have lived happy with
my virtuous wife,
Kept away from temptation, from
tumult and strife,
I'd enough to support me in happiness
to live,
But I wanted something more poor
people for to give."
The street singers of the metropolis seized upon the Waterloo
Bridge Tragedy as a fit subject for the exercise of their dismal strains. The
following is printed verbatim, from an illustrated broad-sheet vended "at
the charge of one halfpenny":-
"Oh such a year for dreadful
murders
As this
before was never seen;
In England, Ireland, Britain over,
Such horrid
crimes has never been.
But this which now has been
discovered
Very far
exceeds the whole,
The very thought makes men to
shudder,
How horrible
for to unfold.
"See and read in every
paper
This dreadful
crime, this mystery,
Worse, far worse, than James
Greenacre's
Is the London
mystery.
"His body it was cut to pieces-
Oh how
dreadful was his fate!
Then placed in brine and hid in
secret-
Horrible for
to relate.
The head and limbs had been divided-
Where parts
was taken no one knows;
In a carpet bag they packed the body,
Over Waterloo
bridge they did it throw.
[-207-]"It
is supposed that a female monster
Her victim's
body onward dragged,
With no companion to assist her,
All packed
within a carpet bag.
Justice determined is to take her,
When without
doubt she hi punished be,
The atrocious female Greenacre
Of the
Waterloo Bridge Tragedy."
The reader will see from these specimens how alien the
costermonger race is in sympathy and life from the respectable and the
well-to-do. Their songs are not ours, nor their aims nor conventional
observances. What wonder is it that they leave their wretched cellars all dirt
and darkness, and crowd round the public-house; or that at the costermongers'
house of call-in the midst of an atmosphere of gin and tobacco-smoke, and under
the influence of songs of very questionable merit-the poor lads receive the
education which is to stamp their character and to teach them to grow up
Ishmaelites, with their hands against every one, and every one's hand against
them. Society will not educate its poor; wonder not then that they educate
themselves, and that after a fashion not very desirable in the eyes of the
friends of morality, of order, and of law.