Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters

8. 'Collier's Lurk.– This is followed by thousands who were never in a coal-pit, and numbers of such are daily imposing upon the public as colliers out of employ. They generally say they have been thrown out of work by some accident, such as the flooding of the works or the falling in of the pit… They often go in parties from two to seven or eight… Others have printed papers, which are left at each house, and called for again in a few hours… Others have written statements of the pretended masters of the accidents, and the supposed signatures of the works are affixed to them… Some of those obtain as much as fourteen or fifteen shillings per diem.'

9. 'The Weaver's Lurk.– There are at the present time great numbers who go on this lurk, many of them having printed papers or small handbills, and leave one at each house, and then call again for them, and to receive what persons are disposed to give… I have seen men who represented themselves as weavers of every kind, and from all the manufacturing parts of the kingdom – men who I well knew had never been near a loom, but had been born and bred vagrants.'

10. 'The Cotton Spinner's Lurk.– There are many going on this lurk with printed papers or small handbills also… Some who go on this lurk carry sewing cotton for sale, alleged to be their own spinning… One man I know, who travels on this lurk, has been doing so for twelve years. He sometimes obtains as much as from twelve to fifteen shillings in one day.'

11. 'The Calenderer's Lurk.– Those who go on this lurk represent themselves as calenderer's out of employ, through the depression of trade and improvement in machinery. They, like sham weavers and colliers, have false papers, which are printed, some in poetry.'

The sums raised by these descriptions of 'lurks' must be immense, especially where the individuals have a good address, and can explain and enforce the written and printed appeals they take with them.

'High-Fliers,' or begging letter writers, are, it would seem, the next in order of importance, after the Lurkers. 'These begging letter-writers scribble false statements of their having been unfortunate in business, or suffered great losses, which have reduced them to a state of extreme distress. In London, but especially in the watering and sea-bathing places, these letters procure as much as from five to one pound per day.'

'Shallow Coves' are 'impostors begging through the country as shipwrecked sailors. They generally choose winter, and always go nearly naked. Their object in doing so is to obtain left-off clothes… They have a long, pitiful got-up tale of pretended distress, which they shout through the streets, of having been shipwrecked, &c… Shallow Coves generally go in companies, (or, technically speaking, in school) of from two to ten. There is generally one selected to be the spokesman… As Shallow Coves only call at respectable houses, they often obtain a great deal of money.'

'Shallow Motts' are females who, like the Shallow Coves, go nearly naked. They also adopt that mode of begging in order to obtain wearing apparel… They plead long and severe sickness, but only ask for clothes. The clothes are disposed of as soon as possible, none being ever kept for their own use… I knew one of these who in ten days obtained at Kingston-upon-Thames between seven and eight pounds' worth of clothes.

'Cadgers' are those who make begging their trade, and depend upon it for their support. Cadgers on the downright are those who beg from door to door, and Cadgers on the fly are those who beg as they pass along the tober, (road.) Cadging on the fly is a profitable occupation in the vicinity of bathing-places and large towns. A person of this description generally gets many shillings in the course of the clay. Cadging on the downright (from door to door) is like all other trades, getting worse; but still thousands do very well at it, and frequently get more food than they can consume… I have often seen food, which many working people would gladly have eaten, shamefully and wantonly wasted.

'Cadgers Children' (kiddies) 'are so well instructed in the arts of imposition by their parents, that they frequently obtain more in money and food than grown-up cadgers.'

'Cadgers' Screeving. – There are many cadgers who write short sentences with chalk on the flags, and some of them can do it remarkably well; these are called screevers. I have seen the following sentences frequently written by them in places where there were numbers passing by, and where they thought it would be likely to get plenty of half-pence, (browns,) and now and then a tanner or a bob, (sixpence or a shilling,)

"Hunger is a sharp thorn, and biteth keen.""I cannot get work, and to beg I am ashamed."

I have known them by this means obtain seven shillings a day.

'Cadgers' Sitting Pad.– Whenever cadgers stand or sit, either in towns or by the road side, to beg, they call it sitting or standing pad; and this often proves a very profitable method. Some of them affect blindness; whilst others represent themselves as unable to follow any employment, in consequence of being subject to fits. Some cadgers save very considerable sums of money; but these are very few, compared with the great number who live by this trade of beggary.

'Match-sellers' never entirely depend upon selling matches, for they cadge as well; in fact, they only carry matches as a cloak for begging, and never offer them at any house where they expect to get more without them… Match-sellers, as well as all other cadgers, often get what they call 'a back-door cant;' that is, anything they can carry off where they beg, or offer their matches for sale.'

'Cross Coves,' though they beg their bread, can tell a long story about being out of employ through the badness of trade, &c., yet get what they call on the cross, (by theft.)… One of their chief modes of getting things on the cross is by shoplifting, (called grabbing,)… Another method is to star the glaze, (i. e. break or cut the window.)

'Prigs (or pickpockets) are another class of vagrants, and they frequent races, fairs, and prize-fights… Like cross coves, they are generally young men who have been trained to vagrancy, and have been taught the arts of their profession in their childhood.'

'Palmers are another description of beggars, who visit shops under pretence of collecting harp half-pence; and to induce shopkeepers to search for them, they offer thirteen-pence for a shilling's worth, when many persons are silly enough to empty a large quantity of copper on their counters to search for the half-pence wanted. The palmer is sure to have his hand amongst it; and while he pretends to search for the harps, he contrives to conceal as many as possible in the palm of his hand, and whenever he removes his hand from the coppers on the counter, always holds his fingers out straight, so that the shopkeeper has not the least suspicion that he is being robbed. Sums varying from five to fifteen shillings per diem are frequently got in this way, by characters of that description.'

Extract from Edinburgh Review, Jan. No. 1844:

IRISH PEASANTRY

It is obvious that the insecurity of a community in which the bulk of the population form a conspiracy against the law, must prevent the importation of capital; must occasion much of what is accumulated there to be exported; and must diminish the motives and the means of accumulation. Who will send his property to a place where he cannot rely on its being protected? Who will voluntarily establish himself in a country which to-morrow may be in a state of disturbance? A state in which, to use the words of Chief Justice Bushe, 'houses, and barns, and granaries are leveled, crops are laid waste, pasture lands are ploughed, plantations are torn up, meadows are thrown open to cattle, cattle are maimed, tortured, killed; persons are visited by parties of banditti, who inflict cruel torture, mutilate their limbs, or beat them almost to death; men who have in any way become obnoxious to the insurgents, or opposed their system, or refused to participate in their outrages, are deliberately assassinated in the open day; and sometimes the unoffending members of a family are indiscriminately murdered by burning the habitation." A state in which even those best able to protect themselves, the gentry, are forced to build up all their lower windows with stone and mortar; to admit light only into one sitting-room, and not into all the windows of that room, to fortify every other inlet by bullet proof barricadoes; to station sentinels around during all the night, and the greater part of the day; and to keep fire-arms in all the bedrooms, and even on the side-table at breakfast and dinner time. Well might even Bishop Doyle exclaim – "I do not blame the absentees; I would be an absentee myself if I could."

CHAPTER XV.

"RURAL LIFE OF ENGLAND."

From "Rural Life of England," by Wm. H. Howitt, we take the following extract:

"The wildness into which some of these children in the more solitary parts of the country, grow, (recollect this is in Lancashire, near the great city of Manchester,) is, I imagine, not to be surpassed in any of the back settlements of America. On the 5th July, 1836, the day of that remarkable thunder-storm which visited a great part of the kingdom with much fury, being driven into a cottage at the foot of Pendle by the coming on of this storm, and while standing at the door watching its progress, I observed the head of some human creature, carefully protruded from the doorway of an adjacent shed, and as suddenly withdrawn on being observed. To ascertain what sort of a person it belonged to, I went into the shed, but at first found it too dark to enable me to discover anything. Presently, however, as objects became visible, I saw a little creature, apparently a girl about ten years old, reared very erectly against the opposite wall. On accosting her in a kind tone, and telling her to come forward and not be afraid, she advanced from the wall, and behold! there stood another little creature, about the head shorter, whom she had been concealing. I asked the elder child, whether this younger one were a girl. She answered, 'Ne'a.' 'Was it a boy?' 'Ne'a.' 'What! neither boy nor girl? Was she a girl herself?' 'Ne'a.' 'What! was it a boy I was speaking to?' 'Ne'a.' 'What in the name of wonder were they then?' 'We are childer.' 'Childer! and was the woman in the house their mother?' 'Ne'a.' 'Who was she, then?' 'Ar mam.' 'O! your mam! and do you keep cows in this shed?' 'Ne'a, – bee-as.' In short, common English was quite unintelligible to these poor little creatures, and their appearance was as wild as their speech. They were two fine young creatures, nevertheless, – especially the elder, whose form and face were full of that symmetry and fine grace that are sometimes the growth of unrestrained Nature, and would have delighted the sculptor or painter. Their only clothing was a sort of little boddice with skirts, made of a reddish stuff, and rendered more picturesque by sundry patches of scarlet cloth, no doubt from their mother's old cloak. Their heads, bosoms, and legs to the knees, were bare to all the influences of earth and heaven; and on giving each of them a penny, they bounded off with the fleetness and elasticity of young roes. No doubt the hills and the heaths, the wild flowers of summer, and the swift waters of the glens, were the only live long day companions of these children, who came home only to their oatmeal dinner, and a bed as simple as their garments. Imagine the violent change of life by the sudden capture and confinement of these little English savages in the night-and-day noise, labor, and foul atmosphere of the cotton purgatories!

"In the immediate neighborhood of towns, many of the swelling ranges of hills present a much more cultivated aspect, and delight the eye with their smooth, green, and flowing outlines; and the valleys, almost everywhere, are woody, watered with clear, rapid streams, and in short, are beautiful. But along the rise of the tall chimneys of vast and innumerable factories, and even while looking on the places of the master manufactories, with their woods, and gardens, and shrubbery lawns around them, one cannot help thinking of the horrors detailed before the committee of the House of Commons, respecting the Factory System; of the parentless and friendless wretches, sent by wagon loads from distant work-houses to these prisons of labor and despair; of the young frames crushed to the dust by incessant labor; of the beds into which one set of children got, as another set got out, so that they were said never to be cold the whole year round, till contagious fires burnt out and swept away by hundreds these little victims of Mammon's ever-urging never-ceasing wheel. Beautiful as are many of these wild recesses, where, before the introduction of steam, the dashing rivulet invited the cotton-spinners to erect their mills; and curious as the remains of those simple original factories are, with their one great water-wheel, which turned their spindles while there was water, but during the drought of summer quite as often stood still; yet one is haunted even there, among the shadows of the fine old trees that throw their arms athwart streams dashing down their beds of solid rock, by the memory of little tender children, that never knew pity or kindness, but labored on and on, through noon and through midnight, till they slept and yet mechanically worked, and were often awaked only by the horrid machinery rending off their limbs. In places like these, where now the old factories and large houses of the proprietors, stand deserted, or are inhabited by troops of poor creatures, whose poverty only makes them appear the more desolate. We are told by such men as Mr. Fielden, of Oldham, once a factory child himself, and now a great manufacturer, who dares to reveal the secrets of the prison-house, that little children have even committed suicide to escape from a life worse than ten deaths. And what a mighty system is this now become? What a perpetual and vast supply of human energy and human life it requires, with all the facilities of improved machinery, with all the developed power of steam, and with all the glowing thirst of wealth to urge it on! We are told that the state of the factories is improved, and I trust they are; but if there be any truth in the evidence given before the Parliamentary committees, there is need of great amelioration yet; and it is, when we recollect these things, how completely the laboring class has, in these districts, been regarded as mere machinery for the accumulation of enormous capitals, that we cease to wonder at their uncouth and degraded aspect, and at the neglect in which they are suffered to swarm over these hills, like the very weeds of humanity, cast out into disregarded places, and left to spread and increase in rank and deleterious luxuriance."

What is so poetically and graphically described by Mr. Hewitt, is verified in its minutest details in the "Glory and Shame of England," a very interesting work by C. Edwards Lester, an abolitionist of New York.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE DISTRESSED NEEDLE-WOMEN AND HOOD'S SONG OF THE SHIRT

We take what follows from the January No., 1849, of the Westminster Review – we having nothing to remark, except as to the line from the French song, which has taken the place of the Marseilloise as the great National Song, we should rather say, National Dirge. It is the maddening cry of hunger for employment and bread, and more resembles the howl of the wolves of the Pyrennes, as they start in quest of prey, than the Anthem of Liberty. It truly represents, embodies and personifies the great Socialistic movement of the day. Whilst statesmen and philosophers speculate, the mass agitate, organize and threaten. Winter before last, they took possession of the streets of New York, and levied enforced charity. This spring, they meet in the Park and resolve, "that there were fifty thousand men and women in vain seeking employment during the last inclement winter. America echoes to France, "Vivre en travaillant, ou mourir en combatant!" 'Tis the tocsin and the watchword of free society. 'Tis the grumbling noise of the heaving volcano, that threatens and precedes a social eruption greater than the world has yet witnessed. But let us give the language of the Reviewer:

"The question of human misery – its causes and their removal, is at the bottom of the movement which is now convulsing Europe, and which threatens to agitate it for some time to come. Could some practicable scheme of relief, generally acceptable to all classes and adequate to cope with the magnitude of the evil, be but suggested, what a load of anxiety would be taken from the mind of many a Minister of State! – what comfort would be offered to many a desponding philanthropist!

"Human misery has at last found tongues and pens to make itself heard and felt. It appeals to our feelings and our understandings, to our sympathies and fears. Its wails melt us to pity, its ravings terrify us, its woes sicken us. It will no longer hide itself. We must either remove it, or submit to have it constantly exposed to our gaze in all its horrid deformity.

"Hitherto the comfortable classes have virtually answered the bitter complaints of the uncomfortable classes in some such terms as these: 'Poor people! we are very sorry for your suffering – we really feel for you – take this trifle – it will be some relief. We wish we could do more; – and now pray be quiet – don't distress us with your writhings and agonies – resign yourselves to the will of Providence, and bear hunger and cold in peace and seclusion; – above all, attempt no violence, or we must use violence to keep you quiet.' The answer of the uncomfortable classes to such admonitions, day by day becoming more unmistakable, is: 'Relieve us, relieve us! Make us comfortable, or show us how we may make ourselves comfortable: otherwise we must make you uncomfortable. We will be comfortable or uncomfortable together.'

"'Vivre en travaillant, ou mourir en combatant.' In our last number, we ventured to offer a few indications as to what we considered a part, an important part, of the remedial measures to be resorted to for the prevention of human misery. We were then dealing with that question as a whole. We now propose to address ourselves to miseries of a class.

"The sufferings of the distressed needle-woman have obtained an infamous notoriety – they are a scandal to our age and a reproach to our boasted civilization. They have been clothed in language at once truthful and impressive, full of pathos and yet free from exaggeration. Well known as Hood's immortal lines may be, we reproduce them here, because no narrative, no statistics of ours, could be more true nor half so much to the purpose:

THE SONG OF THE SHIRT"With fingers weary and worn,    With eyelids heavy and red,A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,    Plying her needle and thread.Stitch – stitch – stitch!    In poverty, hunger, and dirt;And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch,    She sang the 'Song of the Shirt!'"Work – work – work!    While the cock is crowing aloof!And work – work – work!    Till the stars shine through the roof!It's O! to be a slave,    Along with the barbarous Turk,Where woman has never a soul to save,    If this is Christian work!"Work – work – work!    Till the brain begins to swim;Work – work – work!    Till the eyes are heavy and dim!Seam and gusset and band,    Band and gusset and seam,Till o'er the buttons I fall asleep,    And sew them on in a dream!"O! men, with sisters dear!    O! men, with mothers and wives,It is not linen you're wearing out!    But human creatures' lives!Stitch – stitch – stitch!    In poverty, hunger, and dirt;Sewing at once, with a double thread,    A shroud as well as a shirt!"But why do I talk of death?    That phantom of grisly bone?I hardly fear his terrible shape,    It seems so like my own!It seems so like my own,    Because of the fasts I keep —Oh, God! that bread should be so dear,    And flesh and blood so cheap!"Work – work – work!    My labor never flags;And what are its wages? A bed of straw,    A crust of bread, and – rags.That shatter'd roof, and this naked floor,    A table – a broken chair;And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank    For sometimes falling there!"Work – work – work!    From weary chime to chime,Work – work – work,    As prisoners work for crime!Band and gusset and seam,    Seam and gusset and band,Till the heart is sick and the brain benumb'd,    As well as weary hand."Work – work – work!    In dull December light,And work – work – work,    When the weather is warm and bright —While underneath the eaves    The brooding swallows cling,As if to show me their sunny backs    And twit me with the Spring."Oh! but to breathe the breath    Of the cowslip and primrose sweet —With the sky above my head,    And the grass beneath my feet,For only one short hour —    To feel as I used to feel,Before I knew the woes of want    And the walk that costs a meal!"Oh, but for one short hour!    A respite however brief!No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,    But only time for Grief!A little weeping would ease my heart —    But in their briny bedMy tears must stop, for every drop    Hinders needle and thread!"With fingers weary and worn,    With eyelids heavy and red,A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,    Plying her needle and thread —Stitch – stitch – stitch!    In poverty, hunger, and dirt,Would that its tone could reach the rich!    She sang this 'Song of the Shirt!'"

We annex part of an article from Jerrold's Magazine, which draws quite as clear a picture of the condition of the English poor, and points out the only feasible remedy for the evils of that condition:

SLAVERYTHE ONLY REMEDY FOR THE MISERIES OF THE ENGLISH POORBY A PHILANTHROPIST

Whoever is unprepared to cast aside not only his prejudices, but many of what may be considered well-formed opinions, had better not attempt to peruse the following few pages. I must demand of my reader that he come to the perusal, the beau ideal of a juryman. No information that he has gained elsewhere, no feelings that he has cherished as virtues, no sentiments that he has cultivated as noble, and no opinions that he may have formed as infallible, must interfere with his purely and simply receiving the following arguments on their own cogency and truth alone.

The writer considers he has made a great discovery in moral and political science; and elevated by his subject above all personal influences, he commits it to be worked out by others, without the ostentation of recording his name, or deeming that the applause of present or of future generations can add to his sublime delight, in discovering and applying a "panacea" to the varied and bitter ills that beset three-fourths of the poor inhabitants of the "United Kingdom."

As some account of the means by which a great discovery has been arrived at is necessary, in order to prepare the mind for its reception with due respect, I shall give a brief outline of the process by which this all-important truth was elicited.

Born with natural sensibilities, I early learnt to shrink from pain endured by others, as if felt actually and bodily by myself. Thus constituted, what a scene was displayed to me when I came into the great and moving society of mankind! What mighty heaps of misery did I discern! What details did the records of the various courts of justice disclose! What regions of squalor, misery, and degradation did my travels reveal to me in every city, and every hamlet, I visited! The bent of my future avocation was soon fixed, and I became a philanthropist by profession. Not to make a trade of it at monster meetings, or fancy fairs, but as a pursuit to which I felt myself called by a spiritual voice, as distinct, I should say, as that which ever called a theologian from a curacy of fifty pounds a year to a bishopric of twenty thousand.

It is not necessary to recapitulate the horrors I have witnessed in the regions of poverty. It is said that the eras of pestilence and famine are passed, but so will not those say who have visited the dwellings of the operatives of our great manufacturing towns, when the markets are glutted, and the mills and manufactories are closed. Pestilence still rages fiercely as ever, in the form of typhus, engendered by want. In the mission I have called myself to, I have stood upon the mud floor, over the corpse of the mother and the new-born child – both the victims of want. I have seen a man (God's image) stretched on straw, wrapped only in a mat, resign his breath, from starvation, in the prime of age. I have entered, on a sultry summer's night, a small house, situate on the banks of a common sewer, wherein one hundred and twenty-seven human beings, of both sexes and all ages, were indiscriminately crowded. I have been in the pestilential hovels of our great manufacturing cities, where life was corrupted in every possible mode, from the malaria of the sewer to the poison of the gin-bottle. I have been in sheds of the peasant, worse than the hovel of the Russian, where eight squalid, dirty, boorish creatures were to be kept alive by eight shillings per week, irregularly paid. I have seen the humanities of life desecrated in every way. I have seen the father snatch the bread from his child, and the mother offer the gin-bottle for the breast. I have seen, too, generous sacrifices and tender considerations, to which the boasted chivalries of Sydney and Edward were childish ostentation. I have found wrong so exalted, and right so debased – I have seen and known of so much misery, that the faith in good has shivered within me.