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← London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 3

London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 3 (part 5 of 5)

Part 5 of 5 · Henry Mayhew · Public domain text

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Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #57060, public domain in the United States · text not rewritten or summarized · How RedLectern is built

 

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London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 3 (part 5 of 5)

It was not difficult to see, by the looks of the poor woman whom I next addressed, the distress and privation she had endured. Her eyes were full of tears, and there was a plaintiveness in her voice that was most touching. She was clad in rusty black, and had on a black straw bonnet with a few old crape flowers in it; but still, in all her poverty, there was a neatness in her appearance that told she was much unused to such abject misery as had now come upon her. Hers was, indeed, a wretched story--the victim of her husband’s ill treatment and neglect:--“I have been working at needlework ever since the end of August. My husband is living; but he has deserted me, and I don’t know where he is at present. He had been a gentleman’s servant, but he could attend to a garden, and of late years he had done so. I have been married nine years next April. I never did live happily with him. He drank a very great deal, and when tipsy he used to beat me sorely. He had been out of work for a long time before he got his last situation, and there he had 18_s._ a-week. He lost his place before that through drink. Oh, sir, perhaps he’d give me all his money at the end of the week within three shillings; but then he’d have more than half of it back again--not every week alike, of course, but that was mostly the case--and in particular, for the last year and a half, for since then he had been worse. While he was with me I have gone out for a day’s charing occasionally, but then I found I was no for’arder at the week’s end, and so I didn’t strive so much as I might have done, for if I earned two shillings he’d be sure to have it from me. I was a servant, before he married me, in a respectable tradesman’s family. I lived three years and a half at my master’s house out of town, and that was where I fell in with my husband. He was a shopman then. I lived with him more than eight years, and always acted a wife’s part to him. I never drank myself, and was never untrue to him; but he has been too untrue to me, and I have had to suffer for it. I bore all his unkindness until August last, when he treated me so badly. I cannot mention to you how--but he deceived me and injured me in the worst possible manner. I have one child, a boy, seven years old last September; but this boy is with him, and I don’t know where. I have striven to find him out, but cannot. When I found out how he had deceived me we had words, and he then swore he wouldn’t come home any more to me, and he has kept to his oath, for I haven’t set eyes on him since. My boy was down at a friend’s house at Cambridge, and they gave him up to the father without my knowledge. When he went away I had no money in the house. Nothing but a few things--tables, and chairs, and a bed in a room. I kept them as long as I could, but at last they went to find me in food. After he had gone I got a bit of needle-work. I worked at the dress-making and several different kinds of work since he left me. Then I used to earn about five shillings a-week; sometimes not so much. Sometimes I have made only two shillings, and lately--that is, within the last six weeks--I have earned scarcely anything. About October last I was obliged to sell my things to pay off my rent and get myself something to eat. After that I went to lodge with a person, and there I stopped till very lately, when I had scarce nothing, and couldn’t afford to pay my rent. Then I was turned out of there, and I went and made shift with a friend by lying down on the boards, beside her children. I lay down with my clothes on. I had nothing to cover me, and no bed under me. They was very poor people. At last my friend and her husband didn’t like to have people about in the room where they slept; and besides, I was so poor I was obliged to beg a bit of what they had, and they was so poor they couldn’t afford to spare it to me. They were very good and kind to me so long as they could hold out anyhow, but at last I was obliged to leave, and walk about the streets. This I did for two whole nights--last Sunday and Monday nights. It was bitter cold, and freezing sharp. I did go and sit on the stairs of a lodging-house on Monday night, till I was that cold I could scarcely move a limb. On Tuesday night I slept in the Borough. A lady in the street gave me threepence. I asked her if she could give me a ticket to go anywhere. I told her I was in the deepest distress, and she gave me all the halfpence she had, and I thought I would go and have a night’s lodging with the money. All these three days and nights I had only a piece of bread to keep down my hunger. Yesterday I was walking about these parts, and I see a lot of people standing about here, and I asked them if there was anything being given away. They told me it was the Refuge, or else I shouldn’t have known there was such a place. Had I been aware of it, I shouldn’t have been out in the streets all night as I was on Sunday and Monday. When I leave here (and they’ll only keep me for three nights) I don’t know what I shall do, for I have so parted with my things that I ain’t respectable enough to go after needlework, and they do look at you so. My clothes are all gone to live upon. If I could make myself look a little decent, I might perhaps get some work. I wish I could get into service again. I wish I’d never left it, indeed: but I want things. If I can’t get any things, I must try in such as I have got on: and if I can’t get work, I shall be obliged to see if the parish will do anything for me; but I’m afraid they won’t. I am thirty-three years old, and very miserable indeed.”

From the opening of the Refuges for the Houseless in 1820, until 1852, as many as 189,223 homeless individuals received “nightly shelter” there, being an average of upwards of 6000 a-year. Some of these have remained three or four nights in the same establishment; so that, altogether, no less than 1,141,558 nights’ lodgings were afforded to the very poor, and 2,778,153 lbs., or nearly 25,000 cwt. of bread distributed among them.

ASYLUM FOR THE HOUSELESS POOR.

There is a world of wisdom to be learnt at the Asylum for the Houseless Poor. Those who wish to be taught in this, the severest school of all, should pay a visit to Playhouse-yard, and see the homeless crowds gathered about the Asylum, waiting for the first opening of the doors, with their bare feet, blue and ulcerous with the cold, resting for hours on the ice and snow in the streets, and the bleak stinging wind blowing through their rags. To hear the cries of the hungry, shivering children, and the wrangling of the greedy men, scrambling for a bed and a pound of dry bread, is a thing to haunt one for life. There are 400 and odd creatures utterly destitute--mothers with infants at their breasts--fathers with boys holding by their side--the friendless--the penniless--the shirtless, shoeless, breadless, homeless; in a word, the very poorest of this the very richest city in the world.

The Asylum for the Houseless is the confluence of the many tides of poverty that, at this period of the year, flow towards the metropolis. It should be remembered that there are certain callings, which yield a subsistence to those who pursue them only at particular seasons. Brickmakers, agricultural labourers, garden-women, and many such vocations, are labours that admit of being performed only in the summer, when, indeed, the labourer has the fewest wants to satisfy. The privations of such classes, then, come at a period when even the elements conspire to make their destitution more terrible. Hence, restless with want, they wander in hordes across the land, making, in vain hope, for London, as the great emporium of wealth--the market of the world. But London is as overstocked with hands as every other nook and corner of the country. And then the poor creatures, far away from home and friends, find at last to their cost, that the very privations they were flying from pursue them here with a tenfold severity. I do not pretend to say that all found within the walls of these asylums are such as I have described; many, I know, trade upon the sympathy of those who would ease the sufferings of the destitute labourers, and they make their appearance in the metropolis at this especial season. Winter is the beggar’s harvest. That there are hundreds of professional vagabonds drawn to London at such a time, I am well aware; but with them come the unemployed workmen. We must not, therefore, confound one with the other, nor let our indignation at the vagabond who will not work, check our commiseration for the labourer or artisan who cannot get work to do.

The table on the following page, which has been made up with considerable care and no little trouble, shows the number of persons from different counties sheltered at the Asylum for the Houseless Poor in the Metropolis for fourteen years.

-------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | | | | |1829|1830|1831|1832|1834|1840|1841|1842|1843|1844|1845| | to | to | to | to | to | to | to | to | to | to | to | |1830|1831|1832|1833|1835|1841|1842|1843|1844|1845|1846| -------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ NORTH MIDLAND | | | | | | | | | | | | AGRICULTURAL. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Lincolnshire | 142| 40| 47| 50| 17| 80 |147| 110| 167| 89| 43| Rutlandshire | ...| ...| ...| ...| 1| 5| 13| 13| 8| 10| 2| Northamptonshire | 17| 20| 31| 15| 14| 77| 144| 108| 125| 124| 50| Shropshire | 142| 36| 27| 23| 11| 32| 75| 74| 105| 60| 41| Herefordshire | 18| 19| ...| ...| 9| 28| 61| 28| 85| 43| 18| | | | | | | | | | | | | SOUTH MIDLAND | | | | | | | | | | | | EASTERN | | | | | | | | | | | | AGRICULTURAL. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Norfolk | 82| 94| 73| 53| 37| 125| 167| 226| 268| 267| 135| Suffolk | 53| 57| 35| 29| 21| 79| 164| 210| 239| 188| 81| Cambridgeshire | 141| 49| 44| 33| 20| 70| 84| 106| 150| 90| 88| Huntingdonshire | 13| 5| 6| 9| 2| 24| 46| 41| 44| 14| 8| Essex | 101| 176| 165| 17| 44| 206| 324| 406| 715| 519| 133| Oxfordshire | 71| 66| 15| 21| 9| 75| 127| 154| 234| 193| 99| Berkshire | 142| 93| 43| 51| 33| 153| 264| 382| 641| 366| 244| Wiltshire | 53| 62| 58| 34| 21| 99| 193| 201| 262| 202| 97| | | | | | | | | | | | | SOUTH AGRICULTURAL | | | | | | | | | | | | AND MARITIME. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Kent | 160| 242| 150| 120| 53| 271| 467| 539| 989| 649| 412| Sussex | 52| 64| 47| 54| 27| 135| 170| 175| 322| 230| 136| Hampshire | 129| 134| ...| ...| 47| 134| 286| 341| 544| 406| 226| Dorsetshire | 40| 27| 17| 23| 11| 37| 71| 62| 99| 79| 25| Devonshire | 122| 118| 141| 153| 70| 83| 180| 206| 375| 225| 135| | | | | | | | | | | | | SOUTH MIDLAND | | | | | | | | | | | | AGRICULTURAL, | | | | | | | | | | | | WITH DISPERSED | | | | | | | | | | | | DOMESTIC | | | | | | | | | | | | MANUFACTURES. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Bedfordshire | 44| 48| 27| 35| 12| 43| 116| 114| 131| 92| 55| Hertfordshire | 93| 104| 33| 24| 31| 164| 240| 262| 199| 259| 182| Buckinghamshire | 40| 42| 24| 31| 11| 84| 190| 147| 258| 246| 187| Somersetshire | 158| 153| 195| 181| 75| 210| 345| 262| 535| 327| 247| | | | | | | | | | | | | NORTHERN AND | | | | | | | | | | | | MIDLAND | | | | | | | | | | | | MANUFACTURING AND | | | | | | | | | | | | MINING. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Lancashire | 85| 221| 230| 195| 100| 285| 490| 716| 404| 604| 408| Cheshire | 60| 21| 20| 35| 12| 37| 91| 100| 108| 53| 32| Derbyshire | 29| 19| 25| 17| 6| 43| 79| 70| 91| 60| 39| Nottinghamshire | 71| 40| 16| 21| 17| 43| 77| 52| 128| 51| 39| Staffordshire | 48| 50| 25| 28| 7| 94| 175| 136| 270| 123| 50| Leicestershire | 40| 44| 20| 23| 14| 55| 11x| 81| 168| 96| 41| Warwickshire | 78| 112| 72| 60| 28| 163| 295| 384| 51| 242| 188| Worcestershire | 62| 12| 27| ...| 12| 49| 96| 72| 114| 43| 33| Gloucestershire | 119| 110| 32| 39| 18| 82| 137| 232| 352| 281| 138| | | | | | | | | | | | | NORTHERN MINING AND| | | | | | | | | | | | AGRICULTURAL. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Northumberland | 9| 32| 24| 15| 11| 24| 49| 49| 88| 74| 19| Durham | ...| 16| 6| 9| 8| 19| 68| 80| 134| 126| 26| Cumberland | 18| 27| 23| 33| 6| 28| 35| 29| 45| 48| 10| Westmoreland | ...| ...| 5| 9| 1| 10| 24| 20| 24| 7| 4| Yorkshire | 98| 120| 49| 31| 52| 180| 330| 306| 282| 215| 121| | | | | | | | | | | | | WESTERN MINING AND | | | | | | | | | | | | AGRICULTURAL. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Wales | 117| 115| 593| 887| 280| 138| 137| 103| 160| 559| 210| Cornwall | 20| 29| 29| 31| 5| 29| 54| 67| 82| 47| 22| | | | | | | | | | | | | METROPOLITAN. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | London | 107| 115| 593| 887| 280| 138| 137| 103| 160| 559| 210| Middlesex |1742|1251| 195| 217| 150| 774| 862| 576| 807| 390| 227| Surrey | 263| 119| 151| 127| 38| 211| 294| 193| 355| 195| 151| Ireland |1371|1311| 547| 403| 300| 896|1108|1305|1712|1253| 772| Scotland | 213| 914| 241| 210| 139| 77| 136| 240| 299| 400| 294| Guernsey and Jersey| 5| 14| ...| 2| 3| 5| ...| 7| 22| 8| 8| France | 1| ...| 3| 7| 7| ...| ...| 1| ...| 10| 2| Italy | 2| 2| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| 5| 13| 1| ...| Germany | ...| ...| 7| 5| ...| 24| 36| 59| 60| 25| 27| Holland | 11| 9| 2| 4| ...| ...| ...| 4| 6| 2| ...| Prussia | 7| 9| 3| ...| ...| ...| ...| 6| 24| 8| 2| Spain | 6| 6| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| 4| 21| 13| ...| Portugal | 7| 7| 2| 11| 1| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| Russia | 1| 5| 3| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| 4| 10| ...| Sweden | 7| 22| 4| 9| ...| ...| ...| ...| 8| ...| ...| Norway | 16| 8| 3| 5| 1| ...| ...| 6| 3| 26| 4| Australia | ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| ...| 2| ...| 6| ...| America | 2| 31| 42| 32| 8| 20| 52| 80| 67| 56| 50| East Indies | 9| 1| 5| 3| 6| 22| 39| 40| 57| 12| 200| West Indies | 20| 22| 26| 11| 4| 16| 21| 57| 83| 44| 34| Africa | 4| 11| 6| 7| ...| ...| ...| 5| 50| 24| 6| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | -------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+

+----+-----+----+-------+--------- | | | | |Average |1846| 1847|1848| |for each | to | to | to | Total.|year for |1847| 1848|1849| |14 years. +----+-----+----+-------+--------- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 204| 81| 85| 1302| 93·0 | 24| 8| 24| 108| 7·7 | 227| 115| 67| 1135| 81·0 | 79| 80| 42| 827| 50·0 | 65| 54| 45| 445| 31·8 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 364| 161| 163| 2215| 158·2 | 385| 100| 133| 1783| 127·2 | 204| 114| 88| 1281| 91·5 | 34| 22| 25| 293| 20·9 |1034| 567| 392| 4799| 342·8 | 303| 136| 100| 1603| 114·5 | 767| 342| 287| 3788| 270·5 | 377| 205| 87| 1951| 139·3 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |1458| 845| 523| 6878| 491·3 | 506| 230| 147| 2195| 15·7 | 730| 441| 414| 3832| 273·7 | 126| 57| 46| 720| 51·4 | 453| 237| 209| 2697| 192·6 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 171| 109| 55| 1052| 75·1 | 592| 377| 181| 2741| 19·6 | 314| 168| 88| 1830| 130·7 | 871| 556| 246| 4361| 311·5 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |1272| 748| 811| 6509| 469·2 | 170| 51| 40| 830| 59·3 | 97| 46| 48| 669| 47·8 | 107| 62| 68| 784| 56·0 | 256| 121| 129| 1521| 108·6 | 163| 69| 79| 1007| 71·9 | 562| 256| 160| 2760| 197·1 | 128| 74| 36| 758| 53·4 | 267| 147| 163| 2048| 146·3 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 69| 51| 72| 586| 41·8 | 110| 71| 54| 727| 41·9 | 66| 32| 12| 412| 29·4 | 19| 14| 6| 143| 10·2 | 427| 298| 126| 2635| 188·2 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 878| 726| 343| 5236| 374·0 | 82| 52| 32| 581| 41·5 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 878| 726| 343| 5236| 374·0 |1065| 538| 214| 9008| 643·4 | 572| 329| 204| 3202| 22·9 |7576|10756|5068| 34378| 2455·5 | 172| 623| 344| 4331| 309·3 | 1| 25| 47| 147| 10·5 | 8| 24| 14| 77| 5·5 | 9| 5| 7| 44| 3·1 | 38| 36| 53| 370| 26·4 | ...| ...| ...| 38| 2·7 | 4| 5| ...| 68| 4·0 | ...| ...| 10| 60| 4·3 | ...| 2| 5| 35| 2·5 | 2| 10| 7| 42| 3·0 | ...| ...| ...| 50| 3·6 | ...| 3| ...| 75| 5·3 | 2| 4| ...| 14| 1·0 | 65| 76| 78| 679| 48·5 | 24| 38| 19| 475| 33·9 | 53| 25| 25| 446| 31·8 | 2| 6| 12| 132| 9·4 | | | +-------+--------- | | | |130,625| 87·496 +----+-----+----+-------+---------

A homeless painter gave me the following statement. His appearance presented nothing remarkable. It was merely that of the poor artisan. There was nothing dirty or squalid about him:--

“I was brought up a painter,” he said, “and I am now 27. I served my apprenticeship in Yorkshire, and stayed two years after my term was out with the same master. I then worked in Liverpool, earning but little through illness, and working on and off as my health permitted. I got married in Liverpool, and went with my wife to Londonderry, in Ireland, of which place she was a native. There she died of the cholera in 1847. I was very ill with diarrhœa myself. We lived with her friends, but I got work, though wages are very low there. I never earned more than 2_s._ 6_d._ a-day there. I have earned 5_s._ 6_d._ a-day in Liverpool, but in Londonderry provisions are very cheap--the best meat at 4_d._ a-pound. It was an advantage to me being an Englishman. English workmen seem to be preferred in Ireland, so far as I can tell, and I have worked in Belfast and Coleraine, and a short time in Dublin, as well as in Londonderry. I came back to Liverpool early in 1848, and got work, but was again greatly distressed through sickness. I then had to travel the country again, getting a little employment at Hemel Hempstead, and St. Alban’s, and other places about, for I aimed at London, and at last I got to London. That was in November, 1848. When in the country I was forced to part with my clothes. I had a beautiful suit of black among them. I very seldom got even a trifle from the painters in the country towns; sometimes 2_d._ or 3_d._ from a master. In London I could get no work, and my shirts and my flannel-shirts went to keep me. I stayed about a month, and having nothing left, was obliged to start for the country. I got a job at Luton, and at a few other places. Wages are very low. I was always a temperate man. Many a time I have never tasted drink for a week together, and this when I had money in my pocket, for I had 30_l._ when I got married. I have, too, the character of being a good workman. I returned to London again three weeks back, but could find no work. I had again to part with any odd things I had. The last I parted with was my stopping-knife and diamond, for I can work as a glazier and plumber; country painters often can--I mean those apprenticed in the country. I have no clothes but what I have on. For the last ten days, I declare solemnly, I have had nothing but what I picked up in the streets. I picked up crusts that I saw in the streets, put out on the steps by the mistresses of the houses for the poor like myself. I got so weak and ill that I had to go to King’s College Hospital, and they gave me medicine which did me good. I often had to walk the streets all night. I was so perished I could hardly move my limbs. I never asked charity, I can’t; but I could have eaten anything. I longed for the fried fish I saw; yes, I was ravenous for that, and such-like, though I couldn’t have touched it when I had money, and was middling well off. Things are so different in the country that I couldn’t fancy such meat. I was brought to that pitch, I had the greatest mind to steal something to get into prison, where, at any rate, I said to myself, I shall have some food and shelter. I didn’t--I thought better of it. I hoped something might turn up next day; besides, it might have got into the papers, and my friends might have seen it, and I should have felt I disgraced them, or that they would think so, because they couldn’t know my temptations and my sufferings. When out all night, I used to get shelter, if I could, about Hungerford Market, among the straw. The cold made me almost dead with sleep; and when obliged to move, I couldn’t walk at first, I could only crawl along. One night I had a penny given me, all I had gotten in five bitter nights in the streets. For that penny I got half a pint of coffee; it made me sick, my stomach was so weak. On Tuesday I asked a policeman if he couldn’t recommend me to some workhouse, and he told me to come here, and I was admitted, and was very thankful to get under shelter.”

The next was a carpenter, a tall, fine-built man, with a pleasing expression of countenance. He was dressed in a flannel jacket and fustian trousers, with the peculiar little side-pocket for his foot-rule, that told you of his calling. He was about 40 years of age, and had the appearance, even in his destitution, of a most respectable mechanic. It is astonishing to mark the difference between the poor artisan and the labourer. The one seems alive to his poverty, and to feel it more acutely than the other. The labourer is more accustomed to “rough it,” as it is called; but the artisan, earning better wages, and used to better ways, appears among the houseless poor as a really pitiable character. Carpenters are among the classes of mechanics in which there appears to be the greatest amount of destitution, and I selected this man as a fair average specimen of the body. He said,--

“I have been out of work nearly three months. I have had some little work in the mean time, an odd job or two at intervals, but nothing regular. When I am in full work, on day work, I can make 5_s._ a-day in London; but the masters very generally wishes the men to take piece-work, and that is the cause of men’s work being cut down as it is, because men is obliged to take the work as they offers. I could get about 30_s._ a-week when I had good employment. I had no one but myself to keep out of my earnings. I have saved something when I have been on day-work; but then it went again as soon as I got to piece-work. This is generally the case with the carpenters. The last job I had was at Cobham, in Surrey, doing joiners’ work, and business with my master got slack, and I was discharged. Then I made my way to London, and have been about from place to place since then, endeavouring to get work from every one that I knew or could get recommended to. But I have not met with any success. Well, sir, I have been obliged to part with all I had, even to my tools; though they’re not left for much. My tools are pawned for 12_s._, and my clothes are all gone. The last I had to part with was my rule and chalk-line, and them I left for a night’s lodging. I have no other clothes but what you see me in at present. There are a vast many carpenters out of work, and like me. It is now three weeks since the last of my things went, and after that I have been about the streets, and gone into bakers’ shops, and asked for a crust. Sometimes I have got a penny out of the tap-room of a public-house. It’s now more than a fortnight since I quitted my lodgings. I have been in the Asylum eight nights. Before that, I was out in the streets for five nights together. They were very cold nights; yes, very.” [The man shivered at the recollection.] “I walked up one street, and down another. I sometimes got under a doorway, but it was impossible to stand still long, it was so cruel cold. The sleet was coming down one night, and freezed on my clothes as it fell. The cold made me stiff more than sleepy. It was next day that I felt tired; and then, if I came to sit down at a fireside, I should drop asleep in a minute. I tried, when I was dead-beat, to get into St. Giles’s union, but they wouldn’t admit me. Then the police sent me up to another union: I forget the name, but they refused me. I tried at Lambeth, and there I was refused. I don’t think I went a day without some small bit of bread. I begged for it. But when I walked from St. Alban’s to London, I was two days without a bit to put in my mouth. I never stole, not a particle, from any person, in all my trials. I was brought up honest, and, thank God, I have kept so all my life. I would work willingly, and am quite capable: yes, and I would do my work with all my heart, but it’s not to be got at.”

This the poor fellow said with deep emotion; and, indeed, his whole statement appeared in every way worthy of credit. I heard afterwards that he had offered to “put up the stairs of two houses” at some man’s own terms, rather than remain unemployed. He had told the master that his tools were in pawn, and promised, if they were taken out of pledge for him, to work for his bare food. He was a native of Somerset, and his father and mother were both dead.

I then took the statement of a seaman, but one who, from destitution, had lost all the distinguishing characteristics of a sailor’s dress of the better description. He wore a jacket, such as seamen sometimes work in, too little for him, and very thin and worn; a waistcoat, once black; a cotton shirt; and a pair of canvas trousers. He had an intelligent look enough, and spoke in a straightforward manner. He stated:--“I am now thirty-five, and have been a seaman all my life. I first went to sea, as a cabin-boy, at Portsmouth. I was left an orphan at fourteen months, and don’t know that I have a single relation but myself. I don’t know what my father was. I was brought up at the Portsea workhouse. I was taught to read and write. I went to sea in 1827. I have continued a seaman ever since--sometimes doing pretty well. The largest sum I ever had in my possession was 38_l._ when I was in the Portuguese service, under Admiral Sartorius, in the ‘Donna Maria’ frigate. He hadn’t his flag aboard, but he commanded the fleet, such as it was; but don’t call it a fleet, say a squadron. Captain Henry was my last captain there; and after him I served under Admiral Napier; he was admiral out there, with his flag in the ‘Real,’ until Don Miguel’s ships were taken. The frigate I was in, (the ‘Donna Maria,’) took the ‘Princessa Real;’ she was a 44-gun ship, and ours was a 36. It was a stiffish thing while it lasted, was the fight; but we boarded and carried the ‘Princessa.’ I never got all my prize-money. I stopped in Lisbon some time after the fight; and then, as I couldn’t meet with a passage to England, I took service on board the ‘Donegal,’ 74 guns, Captain Fanshawe. I liked Lisbon pretty well; they’re not a very tidy people--treacherous, too, but not all of them. I picked up a very little Portuguese. Most of my thirty-eight pounds went in Lisbon. The ‘Donegal’ brought Don Carlos over, and we were paid off in Plymouth; that was in 1834. Since then I have been in the merchant service. I like that best. My last voyage was in the ‘Richard Cobden,’ a barque of 380 tons, belonging to Dundee; but she sailed from Gloucester for Archangel, and back from Archangel to Dundee, with a cargo of hemp and codilla. We were paid off in Dundee, and I received 4_l._ 8_s._ on the 13th of October.” [He showed me his discharge from the ‘Richard Cobden,’ and his register ticket.] “I went to Glasgow and got a vessel there, an American, the ‘Union;’ and before that I stayed at a lodging-house in Dundee that sailors frequent. There was a shipmate of mine there, a carpenter, and I left my things in his charge, and I went on board the ‘Union’ at Glasgow, and stayed working on board eighteen days; she was short of men. The agreement between me and my old shipmate was, that he should send my things when I required them. My clothes were worth to me more than 5_l._ The ship was to sail on Friday, the 15th of November. Sailors don’t mind getting under weigh on a Friday now; and I got 10_s._ from the skipper to take me to Dundee on Thursday, the 14th; but when I got to Dundee for my clothes, I found that the carpenter had left a fortnight before, taking all my things with him. I couldn’t learn anything as to where he had gone. One man told me he thought he had gone to Derry, where some said he had a wife. The skipper paid me for what days I had been employed, and offered to let me work a passage to New York, but not on wages; because I had no clothes, he couldn’t take me. I tried every ship in the Broomilaw, but couldn’t get a job, nor a passage to London; so me and two other seamen set off to walk to London. I started with 3_s._ One seaman left us at Carlisle. We didn’t live on the way--we starved. It took us a month to get to London. We slept sometimes at the unions; some wouldn’t admit us. I was very lame at last. We reached London a month ago. I got three days’ work as a rigger, at 2_s._ 6_d._ a-day, and a week’s shelter in the Sailors’ Asylum. I had five days’ work also on stevedore’s work in the ‘Margaret West,’ gone to Batavia. That brought me 12_s._ those five days’ work. Since that I’ve done nothing, and was so beat out that I had to pass two days and nights in the streets. One of those days I had a bit of bread and meat from an old mate. I had far rather be out in a gale of wind at sea, or face the worst storm, than be out two such nights again in such weather, and with an empty belly. My mate and I kept on trying to get a ship, but my old jacket was all against me. They look at a man’s clothes now. I passed these two nights walking about Tower-hill, and to London-bridge and back, half dead, and half asleep, with cold and hunger. I thought of doing something to get locked up, but I then thought that would be no use, and a disgrace to a man, so I determined to bear it like a man, and try to get a ship. The man who left us at Carlisle did no better than me, for he’s here too, beat out like me, and he told me of this Asylum. The other man got a ship. I’m not a drinking man, though I may have had a spree or two, but that’s all over. I could soon get a ship if I had some decent clothes. I bought these trousers out of what I earned in London. I spun out my money as fine as any man could.”

The poor fellow who gave me the following narrative was a coloured man, with the regular negro physiognomy, but with nothing of the lighthearted look they sometimes present. His only attire was a sadly soiled shirt of coarse striped cotton, an old handkerchief round his neck, old canvas trousers, and shoes. “I am twenty,” he said, in good English, “and was born in New York. My father was a very dark negro, but my mother was white. I was sent to school, and can read a little, but can’t write. My father was coachman to a gentleman. My mother spoke Dutch chiefly; she taught it to my father. She could speak English, and always did to me. I worked in a gentleman’s house in New York, cleaning knives and going errands. I was always well treated in New York, and by all sorts of people. Some of the ‘rough-uns’ in the streets would shout after me as I was going to church on a Sunday night. At church I couldn’t sit with the white people. I didn’t think that any hardship. I saved seven dollars by the time I was sixteen, and then I went to sea as a cabin-boy on board the ‘Elizabeth,’ a brigantine. My first voyage was to St. John’s, New Brunswick, with a cargo of corn and provisions. My second voyage was to Boston. After that I was raised to be cook. I had a notion I could cook well. I had cooked on shore before, in a gentleman’s house, where I was shown cooking. Pretty many of the cooks in New York are coloured people--the men more than the women. The women are chiefly chambermaids. There was a vacancy, I was still in the ‘Elizabeth,’ when the cook ran away. He was in a bother with the captain about wasting tea and sugar. We went some more voyages, and I then got engaged as cook on board a new British ship, just off the stocks, at St. John’s, New Brunswick, the ‘Jessica.’ About four months ago I came in her to Liverpool, where we were all paid off. We were only engaged for the run. I received 5_l._ I paid 2_l._ 10_s._ to my boarding mistress for two months’ board. It was 5_s._ and extras a-week. I laid out the rest in clothes. I had a job in Liverpool, in loading hay. I was told I had a better chance for a ship in London. I tramped it all the way, selling some of my clothes to start me. I had 6_s._ to start with, and got to London with hardly any clothes, and no money. That’s two months back, or nearly so. I couldn’t find a ship. I never begged, but I stood on the highways, and some persons gave me twopences and pennies. I was often out all night, perishing. Sometimes I slept under the butchers’ stalls in Whitechapel. I felt the cold very bitter, as I was used to a hot climate chiefly. Sometimes I couldn’t feel my feet. A policeman told me to come here, and I was admitted. I want to get a ship. I have a good character as a cook; my dishes were always relished; my pea-soup was capital, and so was my dough and pudding. I often wished for them when I was starving.” [He showed his white teeth, smiling as he spoke.] “Often under the Whitechapel stalls I was so frozen up I could hardly stir in the morning. I was out all the night before Christmas that it snowed. That was my worst night, I think, and it was my first. I couldn’t walk, and hardly stand, when the morning came. I have no home to go to.”

The next was a brickmaker, a man scarce thirty, a stout, big-boned man, but a little pale, evidently from cold and exhaustion. His dress was a short smockfrock, yellow with dry clay, and fustian trousers of the same colour, from the same cause. His statement was as follows:--

“I have been out of work now about seven weeks. Last work I done was on the Middle Level Drainage, in Cambridgeshire. Brickmaking generally begins (if the weather’s fine) about February, or the beginning of March, and it ends about September, and sometimes the latter end of November. If the weather’s frosty, they can’t keep on so long. I was at work up to about the middle of November last, making bricks at Northfleet, in Kent. I was with the same party for three years before. After that, brickmaking was done for the season, and I was discharged with ‘five stools’ of us beside. Each stool would require about six people to work it; so that altogether thirty hands were thrown out of work. After that I went to look for work among the ‘slop’ brickmakers. They makes bricks ‘slop-way’ right through the winter, for they’re dried by flues. I am by rights a sand-stock brickmaker. Howsomever, I couldn’t get a job at brickmaking slop-way, so I went down on the Middle Level, and there I got a job at river-cutting; but the wet weather came, and the water was so strong upon us that we got drownded out. That’s the last job I’ve had. At brickmaking I had 3_s._ 10_d._ a thousand, this last summer. I have had my 4_s._ 6_d._ for the very same work. Two years ago I had that. Six of us could make about 35,000 in a-week, if it was fine. On an average, we should make, I dare say, each of us about 1_l._ a-week, and not more, because if it was a showery day we couldn’t do nothing at all. We used to join one among another in the yard to keep our own sick. We mostly made the money up to 14_s._ a-week when any mate was bad. I did save a few shillings, but it was soon gone when I was out of work. Not many of the brickmakers save. They work from seventeen to eighteen hours every day when it’s fine, and that requires a good bit to eat and drink. The brickmakers most of them drink hard. After I got out of work last November, I went away to Peterborough to look for employment. I thought I might get a job on the London and York Railway, but I couldn’t find none. From there I tramped it to Grimsby: ‘perhaps,’ I said, ‘I may get a job at the docks;’ but I could get nothing to do there, so I came away to Grantham, and from there back to Peterborough again, and after that to Northampton, and then I made my way to London. All this time I had laid either in barns at nighttimes, or slept in the casual wards of the unions--that is, where they would have me. Often I didn’t get nothing to eat for two or three days together, and often I have had to beg a bit to keep body and soul together. I had no other means of living since November last but begging. When I came to town I applied at a large builder’s office for work. I heard he had something to do at the Isle of Dogs, but it was the old story--they were full, and had plenty of hands till the days got out longer. Then I made away to Portsmouth. I knew a man there who had some work, but when I got there he had none to give me at the present time. From there I went along the coast, begging my way still, to Hastings, in hope of getting work at the railway; but all to no good. They had none, too, till the days got longer. After that I came round to London again, and I have been here a fortnight come next Monday. I have done no work. I have wandered about the streets any way. I went to the London Docks to see for a job, and there I met with a man as I knowed, and he paid for my lodging for one or two nights. I walked the streets for two whole nights before I came here. It was bitter cold, freezing sharp, indeed, and I had nothing to eat all the time. I didn’t know there was such a place as this till a policeman told me. A gentleman gave me 6_d._, and that’s all I’ve had since I’ve been in this town. I have been for the last three nights at the Asylum. I don’t suppose they’ll take my ticket away till after to-morrow night, and then I thought of making my way down home till my work starts again. I have sought for work all over the country, and can’t get any. All the brickmakers are in the same state as myself. They none of them save, and must either starve or beg in the winter. Most times we can get a job in the cold weather, but this year, I don’t know what it is, but I can’t get a job at all. Former years I got railway work to do, but now there’s nothing doing, and we’re all starving. When I get down home I shall be obliged to go into the union, and that’s hard for a young man like me, able to work, and willing; but it ain’t to be had, it ain’t to be had.”

Then came a tailor, a young man only twenty-one years old, habited in a black frock-coat, with a plaid shawl twisted round his neck. His eyes were full and expressive, and he had a look of intelligence superior to any that I had yet seen. He told a story which my inquiries into the “slop trade” taught me was “ower true.”

“I have been knocking about for near upon six weeks,” he replied, in answer to my inquiries. “I was working at the slop-trade at the West-end. I am a native of Scotland. I was living with a sweater. I used to board and lodge with him entirely. At the week’s end I was almost always in debt with him--at least he made it out so. I had very often to work all night, but let me slave as hard as I might I never could get out of debt with the sweater. There were often as many as six of us there, and we slept two together in each bed. The work had been slack for some time, and he gave me employment till I worked myself out of his debt, and then he turned me into the streets. I had a few clothes remaining, and these soon were sold to get food and lodging. I lived on my other coat and shirts for a week or two, and at last all was gone, and I was left entirely destitute. Then I had to pace the streets all day and night. The two nights before I came here I never tasted food nor lay down to rest. I had been in a fourpenny lodging before then, but I couldn’t raise even that; and I knew it was no good going there without the money. You must pay before you go to bed at those places. Several times I got into a doorway, to shelter from the wind and cold, and twice I was roused by the policeman, for I was so tired that I fell asleep standing against a shop near the Bank. What with hunger and cold, I was in a half-stupid state. I didn’t know what to do: I was far from home and my mother. I have not liked to let her know how badly I was off.” [The poor lad’s eyes flooded with tears at the recollection of his parent.] “I thought I had better steal something, and then at least I should have a roof over my head. Then I thought I’d make away with myself. I can’t say how; it was a sort of desperation; and I was so stupid with cold and want, that I can hardly remember what I thought. All I wanted was to be allowed to sit down on some doorstep and die; but the police did not allow this. In the daytime I went up and lay about the parks most part of the day, but I couldn’t sleep then; I hardly know why, but I’d been so long without food, that I couldn’t rest. I have purposely kept from writing to my mother. It would break her heart to know my sufferings. She has been a widow this ten years past. She keeps a lodging-house in Leith, and has two children to support. I have been away eight months from her. I came to London from a desire to see the place, and thinking I could better my situation. In Edinburgh, I had made my 1_l._ a-week regularly; often more, and seldom less. When I came to London, a woman met me in the street, and asked me if I wasn’t a tailor? On my replying in the affirmative, she informed me if I would come and work for her husband, I should have good wages, and live with her and her husband, and they would make me quite comfortable. I didn’t know she was the wife of a sweater at that time. It was a thing I had never heard of in Edinburgh. After that time, I kept getting worse and worse off, working day and night, and all Sunday, and still always being in debt to them I worked for. Indeed, I wish I had never left home. If I could get back, I’d go in a moment. I have worked early and late, in the hope of accumulating money enough to take me home again, but I could not even get out of debt, much more save, work as hard as I would.”

I asked if he would allow me to see some letters of his mother’s, as vouchers for the truth of his story, and he produced a small packet, from which, with his permission, I copied the following:--

“My dear Son,--I have this moment received your letter. I was happy to hear from you, and trust you are well. Think of that God who has carried you in safety over the mighty deep. We are all much as you left us. I hope you will soon write. Ever believe me,

“Your affectionate mother,

“---- ----.”

This was the first letter written after his absence from home. Since then his mother, who is aged and rheumatic (his letters vouched for this), had been unable to write a line. His brother, a lad of 16, says, in one of his letters,--

“I am getting on with my Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and French, only I am terribly ill off for want of books. My mother was saying that you would be bringing me a first-rate present from London. I think the most appropriate present you can bring me will be a Greek and English, or a Hebrew and English Lexicon; or some Hebrew, Greek, or Latin book.”

A letter from his sister, a girl of 18, ran as follows:--

“My dear brother,--I take this opportunity of writing you, as you wrote that you would like to have a letter from me. I am very sorry you have been ill, but I hope you are keeping better. I trust also that affliction will be the means of leading you only more closely to the only true source of happiness. Oh, my dear brother, you are still young, and God has told us in His word, that those who seek Him early shall find Him. My dear brother, we get many a sad and solemn warning to prepare to meet our God: and oh! my dear brother, ‘what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’”

The last letter was dated the 5th of December last, and from his brother:--

“We received your kind letter,” it ran, “this instant, and we hasten to answer it. It has given my mother and me great relief to hear from you, as my mother and I were very miserable about you, thinking you were ill. We trust you will take care of yourself, and not get any more cold. We hope you will be able to write on receipt of this, and let us know how you are, and when we may expect you home, as we have daily expected you since the month of October.”

These letters were shown to me at my request, and not produced by the young man himself, so that it was evident they were kept by the youth with no view of being used by him as a means of inducing charity; indeed, the whole manner of the young man was such as entirely precluded suspicion. On my asking whether he had any other credentials as to character, he showed me a letter from a Scotch minister, stating that “he had been under his charge, and that from his conduct he had been led to form a favourable opinion of his talents and moral character; and that he believed him to be a deserving, industrious young man.”

* * * * *

Of the class of distressed tradesmen seeking shelter at this asylum, the two following may be taken as fair types. One was a bankrupt linendraper, and appeared in a most destitute state. When he spoke of his children, his eyes flooded with tears:--

“I have been in business in the linen-drapery line--that’s five years ago. I had about 600_l._ worth of stock at first starting, and used to take about 65_l._ every week. My establishment was in a country village in Essex. I went on medium well for the first two or three years, but the alteration of the poor-laws and the reduction of the agricultural labourers’ wages destroyed my business. My customers were almost all among the working classes. I had dealings with a few farmers, of whom I took butter, and cheese, and eggs, in exchange for my goods. When the poor-laws were altered, the out-door relief was stopped, and the paupers compelled to go inside the house. Before that, a good part of the money given to the poor used to be expended at my shop. The overseers used to have tickets for flannels, blankets, and shirtings, and other goods; with these they used to send the paupers to my house. I used to take full 8_l._ or 10_l._ a-week in this manner; so that when the poor-laws were altered, and the previous system discontinued, I suffered materially. Besides, the wages of the agricultural labourers being lowered, left them less money to lay out with me. On a market-day they were my chief customers. I would trust them one week under the other, and give them credit for 7_s._ or 10_s._, if they wanted it. After their wages came down, they hadn’t the means of laying out a sixpence with me; and where I had been taking 65_l._ a-week, my receipts dwindled to 30_l._ I had been in the habit of keeping two shopmen before, but after the reduction I was obliged to come down to one. Then the competition of the large houses in other towns was more than I could stand against. Having a larger capital, they could buy cheaper, and afford to take a less profit, and so of course they could sell much cheaper than I could. Then, to try and keep pace with my neighbours, I endeavoured to extend my capital by means of accommodation bills, but the interest I had to pay on these was so large, and my profits so little, that it soon became impossible for me to meet the claims upon me. I was made a bankrupt. My debts at the time were 300_l._ This is about six years ago. After that I took a public-house. Some property was left me. I came into about 1000_l._; part of this went to my creditors, and I superseded my bankruptcy. With the rest I determined upon starting in the publican line. I kept at this for about ten months, but I could do nothing with it. There was no custom to the house. I had been deceived into taking it. By the time I got out of it all my money was gone. After that I got a job as a referee at the time of the railway mania, and when that was over, I got appointed as a policeman on the Eastern Union line. There I remained two years and upwards, but then they began reducing their establishment, both in men and in wages. I was among the men who were turned off. Since that time, which is now two years this Christmas, I have had no constant employment. Occasionally I have got a little law-writing to do; sometimes I have got a job as under-waiter at a tavern. After I left the waiter’s place, I got to be very badly off. I had a decent suit of clothes to my back up to that time, but then I became so reduced, I was obliged to go and live in a low lodging-house in Whitechapel. I was enabled to get along somehow; I know many friends, and they gave me a little money now and then. But at last I had exhausted these. I could get nothing to do of any kind. I have been to Shoreditch-station to try to pick up a few pence at carrying parcels, but there were so many there that I could not get a crust that way. I was obliged to pawn garment after garment to pay for my food and lodging; and when they were all gone, I was wholly destitute. I couldn’t even raise twopence for a night’s lodging, so I came here and asked for a ticket. My wife is dead. I have three children; but I would rather you would not say anything about them, if you please.”

I assured the man that his name should not be printed, and he then consented to his children being mentioned.

“The age of my eldest child is fourteen, and my youngest nine. They do not know of the destitution of their father. They are staying with one of my relations, who has supported them since my failure. I wouldn’t have them know of my state on any account. None of my family are aware of my misery. My eldest child is a girl, and it would break her heart to know where I am, and see the state of distress I am in. My boy, I think, would never get over it. He is eleven years old. I have tried to get work at carrying placard-boards about, but I can’t. My clothes are now too bad for me to do anything else. I write a good hand, and would do anything, I don’t care what, to earn a few pence. I can get a good character from every place I have been in.”

The other tradesman’s story was as follows:--

“I am now thirty-three, and am acquainted with the grocery trade, both as master and assistant. I served a five-years’ apprenticeship in a town in Berkshire. The very late hours and the constant confinement made me feel my apprenticeship a state of slavery. The other apprentices used to say they felt it so likewise. During my apprenticeship I consider that I never learnt my trade properly. I knew as much at the year’s end as at the five years’ end. My father gave my master fifty pounds premium; the same premium, or more, was paid with the others. One, the son of a gentleman at ----, paid as much as eighty pounds. My master made an excellent thing of his apprentices. Nearly all the grocers in the part of Berkshire I’m acquainted with do the same. My master was a severe man to us, in respect of keeping us in the house, and making us attend the Methodist Chapel twice, and sometimes thrice, every Sunday. We had prayers night and morning. I attribute my misfortunes to this apprenticeship, because there was a great discrepancy between profession and practice in the house; so there could be no respect in the young men for their employer, and they grew careless. He carried on his business in a way to inspire anything else than respect. On the cheesemongery side we were always blamed if we didn’t keep the scale well wetted, so as to make it heavier on one side than the other--I mean the side of the scale where the butter was put--that was filled or partly filled with water, under pretence of preventing the butter sticking, and so the customer was wronged half an ounce in every purchase. With regard to the bacon, which, on account of competition, we had to sell cheap--at no profit sometimes--he used to say to us, ‘You must make the ounces pay;’ that is, we were expected to add two or more ounces, calculating on what the customer would put up with, to every six odd ounces in the weight of a piece. For instance, if a hock of bacon weighed six pounds seven ounces, at 4-1/2_d._ per pound, we were to charge 2_s._ 3_d._ for the six pounds, and (if possible) adding two ounces to the seven which was the actual weight, charge each ounce a halfpenny, so getting 2_s._ 7-1/2_d._ instead of 2_s._ 5_d._ This is a common practice in all the cheap shops I am acquainted with. With his sugars and teas, inferior sorts were mixed. In grinding pepper, a quantity of rice was used, it all being ground together. Mustard was adulterated by the manufacturers, if the price given showed that the adulterated stuff was wanted. The lowest priced coffee was always half chiccory, the second quality one-third chiccory; the best was one pound of chiccory to three pounds of coffee, or one-fourth. We had it either in chiccory-nibs, which is the root of the endive cultivated in Yorkshire, Prussia, &c., or else a spurious chiccory powdered, twopence per pound cheaper, the principal ingredient being parsnips and carrots cut in small pieces, and roasted like chiccory. A quart of water is the allowance to every twenty-eight pounds of tobacco. We had to keep pulling it, so as to keep it loose, for if left to lie long it would mould, and get a very unpleasant smell. In weighing sugar, some was always spilt loose in the scale opposite the weight, which remains in the scale, so that every pound or so is a quarter of an ounce short. This is the practice only in cutting shops. Often enough, after we have been doing all these rogueries, we were called into prayers. In my next situation, with an honourable tradesman in Yorkshire, I found I had to learn my business over again, so as to carry it on fairly. In two or three years I went into business in the town where I was apprenticed; but I had been subjected to such close confinement, and so many unnecessary restrictions, without any opportunity of improving by reading, that when I was my own master, and in possession of money, and on the first taste of freedom, I squandered my money foolishly and extravagantly, and that brought me into difficulties. I was 150_l._ deficient to meet my liabilities, and my friends advanced that sum, I undertaking to be more attentive to business. After that, a man started as a grocer in the same street, in the ‘cutting’ line, and I had to compete with him, and he sold his sugar a halfpenny a pound less than it cost, and I was obliged to do the same. The preparing of the sugar for the market-day is a country grocer’s week’s work, and all at a loss. That’s the ruin of many a grocer. My profits dwindled year by year, though I stuck very close to business; and in eighteen months I gave it up. By that time other ‘cutting’ shops were opened--none have done any good. I was about 100_l._ bad, which my friends arranged to pay by instalments. After that I hawked tea. I did no good in that. The system is to leave it at the working men’s houses, giving a week’s credit, the customers often taking more. Nothing can be honestly made in that trade. The Scotchmen in the trade are the only men that can do any good in it. The charge is six shillings for what’s four shillings in a good shop. About nine months ago my wife--I had been married seven years--was obliged to go and live with her sister, a dressmaker, as I was too poor to keep her or myself either. I then came to London, to try for employment of any kind. I answered advertisements, and there were always forty or fifty young men after the same situation. I never got one, except for a short time at Brentford. I had also a few days’ work at bill delivery--that is, grocers’ circulars. I was at last so reduced that I couldn’t pay for my lodgings. Nobody can describe the misery I felt as I have walked the streets all night, falling asleep as I went along, and then roused myself up half-frozen, my limbs aching, and my whole body trembling. Sometimes, if I could find a penny, I might sit up in a coffee-shop in Russell-street, Covent-garden, till five in the morning, when I had to roam the streets all day long. Two days I was without food, and determined to commit some felony to save me from starvation, when, to my great joy--for God knows what it saved me from, as I was utterly careless what my fate would be--I was told of this refuge by a poor man who had been there, who found me walking about the Piazzas in Covent-garden as a place of shelter. I applied, and was admitted. I don’t know how I can get a place without clothes. I have one child with my wife, and she supports him and herself very indifferently by dressmaking.”

A soldier’s wife, speaking with a strong Scotch accent, made the following statement. She had altogether a decent appearance, but her features--and there were the remains of prettiness in her look--were sadly pinched. Her manners were quiet, and her voice low and agreeable. She looked like one who had “seen better days,” as the poor of the better sort not unfrequently say in their destitution, clinging to the recollection of past comforts. She wore a very clean checked cotton shawl, and a straw bonnet tolerably entire. The remainder of her dress was covered by her shawl, which was folded closely about her, over a dark cotton gown.

“I was born twenty miles from Inverness, (she said), and have been a servant since I was eleven. I always lived in good places--the best of places. I never was in inferior places. I have lived as cook, housemaid, or servant-of-all-work, in Inverness, Elgin, and Tain, always maintaining a good character. I thank God for that. In all my distress I’ve done nothing wrong, but I didn’t know what distress was when in service. I continued in service until I married; but I was not able to save much money, because I had to do all I could for my mother, who was a very poor widow, for I lost my father when I was two years old. Wages are very low in Scotland to what they are in England. In the year 1847 I lived in the service of the barrack-master of Fort George, twelve miles below Inverness. There I became acquainted with my present husband, a soldier, and I was married to him in March, 1847, in the chapel at Fort George. I continued two months in service after my marriage. My mistress wouldn’t let me away; she was very kind to me; so was my master: they all were. I have a written character from my mistress.” [This, at my request, she produced.] “Two months after, the regiment left Fort George for Leith, and there I lived with my husband in barracks. It is not so bad for married persons in the artillery as in the line (we were in the artillery), in barracks. In our barrack-rooms no single men were allowed to sleep where the married people were accommodated. But there were three or four married families in our room. I lived two years in barracks with my husband, in different barracks. I was very comfortable. I didn’t know what it was to want anything I ought to have. My husband was a kind, sober man.” [This she said very feelingly.] “His regiment was ordered abroad, to Nova Scotia. I had no family. Only six soldiers’ wives are allowed to go out with each company, and there were seventeen married men in the company to which my husband belonged. It’s determined by lot. An officer holds the tickets in his cap, and the men draw them. None of the wives are present. It would be too hard a thing for them to see. My husband drew a blank.” She continued:--

“It was a sad scene when they embarked at Woolwich last March. All the wives were there, all crying and sobbing, you may depend upon that; and the children, too, and some of the men; but I couldn’t look much at them, and I don’t like to see men cry. My husband was sadly distressed. I hoped to get out there and join him, not knowing the passage was so long and expensive. I had a little money then, but that’s gone, and I’m brought to misery. It would have cost me 6_l._ at that time to get out, and I couldn’t manage that, so I stayed in London, getting a day’s work at washing when I could, making a very poor living of it; and I was at last forced to part with all my good clothes after my money went; and my husband, God bless him! always gave me his money to do what I thought best with it. I used to earn a little in barracks with my needle, too. I was taken ill with cholera at the latter end of August. Dear, dear, what I suffered! And when I was getting better I had a second attack, and that was the way my bit of money all went. I was then quite destitute; but I care nothing for that, and would care nothing for anything if I could get out to my husband. I should be happy then. I should never be so happy since I was born before. It’s now a month since I was entirely out of halfpence. I can’t beg; it would disgrace me and my husband, and I’d die in the streets first. Last Saturday I hadn’t a farthing. I hadn’t a thing to part with. I had a bed by the night, at 3_d._ a-night, not a regular lodging-house; but the mistress wouldn’t trust me no longer, as I owed her 2_s._ 6_d._, and for that she holds clothes worth far more than that. I heard of this Asylum, and got admitted, or I must have spent the night in the street--there was nothing else for me; but, thank God! I’ve been spared that. On Christmas day I had a letter from my husband.”

This she produced. It contained the following passage:--

“I am glad this letter only costs you a penny, as your purse must be getting very low; but there is a good time coming, and i trust in God it will not be long, my deir wife. i hope you will have got a good place before this raches you. I am dowing all in my power to help you. i trust in good in 3 months more, if you Help me, between us we make it out.”

She concluded:--

“I wouldn’t like him to know how badly I am off. He knows I would do nothing wrong. He wouldn’t suspect me; he never would. He knows me too well. I have no clothes but what are detained for 2_s._ 6_d._, and what I have on. I have on just this shawl and an old cotton gown, but it’s not broke, and my under-clothing. All my wish is to get out to my husband. I care for nothing else in this world.”

Next comes the tale of a young girl who worked at velvet embossing. She was comely, and modestly spoken. By her attire it would have been difficult to have told that she was so utterly destitute as I afterwards discovered. She was scrupulously neat and clean in her dress; indeed it was evident, even from her appearance, that she belonged to a better class than the ordinary inmates of the Asylum. As she sat alone in the long, unoccupied wards, she sighed heavily, and her eyes were fixed continually on the ground. Her voice was very sorrowful. Her narrative was as follows:--

“I have been out of work for a very long while, for full three months now, and all the summer I was only on and off. I mostly had my work given out to me. It was in pieces of 100 yards, and sometimes less, and I was paid so much for the dozen yards. I generally had 3-1/2_d._, and sometimes 1-1/2_d._, according to what it was; 3-1/2_d._ was the highest price that I had. I could, if I rose at five in the morning, and sat up till twelve, earn between 1_s._ and 1_s._ 3_d._ in a day. I had to cut the velvet after it had been embossed. I could, if a diamond pattern, do five dozen yards in a-day, and if a leaf pattern, I could only do three dozen and a-half. I couldn’t get enough of it to do, even at these prices. Sometimes I was two days in the week without work, and sometimes I had work for only one day in the week. They wanted, too, to reduce the 1-1/2_d._ diamond work to 1_d._ the dozen yards; and so they would have done, only the work got so slack that we had to leave it altogether. That is now seven weeks ago. Before that, I did get a little to do, though it was very little, and since then I have called almost every week at the warehouse, but they have put me off, telling me to come in a fortnight or a week’s time. I never kept acquaintance with any of the other young women working at the warehouse, but I dare say about twenty-five were thrown out of work at the same time as I was. Sometimes I made 6_s._ a-week, and sometimes only 3_s._, and for the last fortnight I got 1_s._ 6_d._ a-week, and out of that I had my own candles to find, and 1_s._ 6_d._ a-week to pay for my lodgings. After I lost my work, I made away with what little clothes I had, and now I have got nothing but what I stand upright in.” [The tears were pouring down the cheeks of the poor girl; she was many minutes afterwards before she could answer my questions, from sobbing.] “I can’t help crying,” she said, “when I think how destitute I am. Oh, yes, indeed, [she cried through her sobs,] I have been a good girl in all my trials. I might have been better off if I had chosen to take to that life. I need not have been here if I had chosen to part with my character. I don’t know what my father was. I believe he was a clerk in one of the foreign confectionery houses. He deserted my mother two months before I was born. I don’t know whether he is dead or not, for I never set eyes on him. If he is alive, he is very well off. I know this from my aunt, who was told by one of his fellow-clerks that he had married a woman of property and gone abroad. He was disappointed with my mother. He expected to have had a good bit of money with her; but after she married him, her father wouldn’t notice her. My mother died when I was a week old, so I do not recollect either of my parents. When my aunt, who was his own sister, wrote to him about myself, my brother and sister, he sent word back that the children might go to the workhouse. But my aunt took pity on us, and brought us all up. She had a little property of her own. She gave us a decent education, as far as lay in her power. My brother she put to sea. My father’s brother was a captain, and he took my brother with him. The first voyage he went (he was fourteen), a part of the rigging fell on him and the first mate, and they were both killed on the spot. My sister went as lady’s-maid to Lady ----, and went abroad with her, now eighteen months ago, and I have never heard of her since. The aunt who brought me up is dead now. She was carried off two years and three months ago. If she had lived I should never have wanted a friend. I remained with her up to the time of her death, and was very happy before that time. After that I found it very hard for a poor lone girl like me to get an honest living. I have been struggling on ever since, parting with my clothes, and often going for two days without food. I lived upon the remainder of my clothes for some little time after I was thrown entirely out of work; but at last I got a fortnight in debt at my lodgings, and they made me leave; that’s a week and three days ago now. Then I had nowhere but the streets to lay my head. I walked about for three days and nights without rest. I went into a chapel. I went there to sit down and pray; but I was too tired to offer up any prayers, for I fell asleep. I had been two nights and three days in the streets before this, and all I had during that time was a penny loaf, and that I was obliged to beg for. On the day that I was walking about, it thawed in the morning, and froze very hard at night. My shoes were very bad, and let in water; and as the night came on, my stockings froze to my feet. Even now I am suffering from the cold of those nights. It is as much as I can do to bend my limbs at present. I have been in the Asylum a week, and to-night is my last night here. I have nowhere to go, and what will become of me the Lord God only knows.” [Again she burst out crying most piteously.] “My things are not fit to go into any respectable workroom, and they won’t take me into a lodging either, unless I’ve got clothes. I would rather make away with myself than lose my character.” [As she raised her hand to wipe away her tears, I saw that her arms were bare; and on her moving the old black mantle that covered her shoulders, I observed that her gown was so ragged that the body was almost gone from it, and it had no sleeves.] “I shouldn’t have kept this,” she said, “if I could have made away with it.” She said that she had no friend in the world to help her, but that she would like much to emigrate.

I afterwards inquired at the house at which this poor creature had lodged, as to whether she had always conducted herself with propriety while living there. To be candid, I could hardly believe that any person could turn a young friendless girl into the streets because she owed two weeks’ rent; though the girl appeared too simple and truthful to fabricate such a statement. On inquiry, I found her story true from the beginning to the end. The landlady, an Irishwoman, acknowledged that the girl was in her debt but 3_s._; that she had lodged with her for several months, and always paid her regularly when she had money; but she couldn’t afford, she said, to keep people for nothing. The girl had been a good, well-behaved, modest girl with her.

DESCRIPTION OF THE ASYLUM FOR THE HOUSELESS.

The Asylum for the Houseless Poor of London is opened only when the thermometer reaches freezing-point, and offers nothing but dry bread and warm shelter to such as avail themselves of its charity.

To this place swarm, as the bitter winter’s night comes on, some half-thousand penniless and homeless wanderers. The poverty-stricken from every quarter of the globe are found within its wards; from the haggard American seaman to the lank Polish refugee, the pale German “out-wanderer,” the tearful black sea-cook, the shivering Lascar crossing-sweeper, the helpless Chinese beggar, and the half-torpid Italian organ-boy. It is, indeed, a ragged congress of nations--a convocation of squalor and misery--of destitution, degradation, and suffering, from all the corners of the earth.

Nearly every shade and grade of misery, misfortune, vice, and even guilt, are to be found in the place; for characters are not demanded previous to admission, want being the sole qualification required of the applicants. The Asylum for the Houseless is at once the beggar’s hotel, the tramp’s town-house, the outcast’s haven of refuge--the last dwelling, indeed, on the road to ruin.

It is impossible to mistake the Asylum if you go there at dark, just as the lamp in the wire cage over the entrance-door is being lighted. This is the hour for opening; and ranged along the kerb is a kind of ragged regiment, drawn up four deep, and stretching far up and down the narrow lane, until the crowd is like a hedge to the roadway. Nowhere in the world can a similar sight be witnessed.

It is a terrible thing, indeed, to look down upon that squalid crowd from one of the upper windows of the institution. There they stand shivering in the snow, with their thin, cobwebby garments hanging in tatters about them. Many are without shirts; with their bare skin showing through the rents and gaps of their clothes, like the hide of a dog with the mange. Some have their greasy coats and trousers tied round their wrists and ankles with string, to prevent the piercing wind from blowing up them. A few are without shoes; and these keep one foot only to the ground, while the bare flesh that has had to tramp through the snow is blue and livid-looking as half-cooked meat.

It is a sullenly silent crowd, without any of the riot and rude frolic which generally ensue upon any gathering in the London streets; for the only sounds heard are the squealing of the beggar infants, or the wrangling of the vagrant boys for the front ranks, together with a continued succession of hoarse coughs, that seem to answer each other like the bleating of a flock of sheep.

To each person is given half-a-pound of the best bread on coming in at night, and a like quantity on going out in the morning; and children, even if they be at the breast, have the same, which goes to swell the mother’s allowance. A clerk enters in a thick ledger the name, age, trade, and place of birth of the applicants, as well as where they slept the night before.

As the eye glances down the column of the register, indicating where each applicant has passed the previous night, it is startled to find how often the clerk has had to write down, “in the streets;” so that “ditto,” “ditto,” continually repeated under the same head, sounded as an ideal chorus of terrible want in the mind’s ear.

The sleeping-wards at the Asylum are utterly unlike all preconceived notions of a dormitory. There is not a bedstead to be seen, nor is even so much as a sheet or blanket visible. The ward itself is a long, bare, whitewashed apartment, with square post-like pillars supporting the flat-beamed roof, and reminding the visitor of a large unoccupied store-room--such as are occasionally seen in the neighbourhood of Thames-street and the Docks. Along the floor are ranged what appear at first sight to be endless rows of large empty orange chests, packed closely side by side, so that the boards are divided off into some two hundred shallow tanpit-like compartments. These are the berths, or, to speak technically, the “bunks” of the institution. In each of them is a black mattress, made of some shiny waterproof material, like tarpauling stuffed with straw. At the head of every bunk, hanging against the wall, is a leather--a big “basil” covering--that looks more like a wine-cooper’s apron than a counterpane. These “basils” are used as coverlids, not only because they are strong and durable, but for a more cogent reason--they do not retain vermin.

Around the fierce stove, in the centre of the ward, there is generally gathered a group of the houseless wanderers, the crimson rays tinting the cluster of haggard faces with a bright lurid light that colours the skin as red as wine. One and all are stretching forth their hands, as if to let the delicious heat soak into their half-numbed limbs. They seem positively greedy of the warmth, drawing up their sleeves and trousers so that their naked legs and arms may present a larger surface to the fire.

Not a laugh nor sound is heard, but the men stand still, munching their bread, their teeth champing like horses in a manger. One poor wretch, at the time of my visit, had been allowed to sit on a form inside the railings round the stove, for he had the ague; and there he crouched, with his legs near as a roasting-joint to the burning coals, as if he were trying to thaw his very marrow.

Then how fearful it is to hear the continued coughing of the wretched inmates! It seems to pass round the room from one to another, now sharp and hoarse as a bark, then deep and hollow as a lowing, or--with the old--feeble and trembling as a bleat.

In an hour after the opening the men have quitted the warm fire and crept one after another to their berths, where they lie rolled round in their leathers--the rows of tightly-bound figures, brown and stiff as mummies, suggesting the idea of some large catacomb.

The stillness is broken only by the snoring of the sounder sleepers and the coughing of the more restless.

It is a marvellously pathetic scene. Here is a herd of the most wretched and friendless people in the world, lying down close to the earth as sheep; here are some two centuries of outcasts, whose days are an unvarying round of suffering, enjoying the only moments when they are free from pain and care--life being to them but one long painful operation as it were, and sleep the chloroform which, for the time being, renders them insensible.

The sight sets the mind speculating on the beggars’ and the outcasts’ dreams. The ship’s company, starving at the North Pole, dreamt, every man of them, each night, of feasting; and are those who compose this miserable, frozen-out beggar crew, now regaling themselves, in their sleep, with visions of imaginary banquets?--are they smacking their mental lips over ideal beef and pudding? Is that poor wretch yonder, whose rheumatic limbs rack him each step he takes--is he tripping over green fields with an elastic and joyous bound, that in his waking moments he can never know again? Do that man’s restlessness and heavy moaning come from nightmare terrors of policemen and treadwheels?--and which among those runaway boys is fancying that he is back home again, with his mother and sisters weeping on his neck?

The next moment the thoughts shift, and the heart is overcome with a sense of the vast heap of social refuse--the mere human street-sweepings--the great living mixen--that is destined, as soon as the spring returns, to be strewn far and near over the land, and serve as manure to the future crime-crops of the country.

Then come the self-congratulations and the self-questionings! and as a man, sound in health and limb, walking through a hospital, thanks God that he has been spared the bodily ailments, the mere sight of which sickens him, so in this refuge for the starving and the homeless, the first instinct of the well-to-do visitor is to breathe a thanksgiving (like the Pharisee in the parable) that “he is not as one of these.”

But the vain conceit has scarcely risen to the tongue before the better nature whispers in the mind’s ear, “By what special virtue of your own are you different from them? How comes it that you are well clothed and well fed, whilst so many go naked and hungry?” And if you in your arrogance, ignoring all the accidents that have helped to build up your worldly prosperity, assert that you have been the “architect of your own fortune,” who, let us ask, gave you the genius or energy for the work?

Then get down from your moral stilts, and confess it honestly to yourself, that you are what you are by that inscrutable grace which decreed your birthplace to be a mansion or a cottage rather than a “padding-ken,” or which granted you brains and strength, instead of sending you into the world, like many of these, a cripple or an idiot.

It is hard for smug-faced respectability to acknowledge these dirt-caked, erring wretches as brothers, and yet, if from those to whom little is given little is expected, surely, after the atonement of their long suffering, they will make as good angels as the best of us.

CHARITIES AND SUMS GIVEN TO THE POOR.

According to the last Report of the Poor-law Commissioners, the paupers receiving in- and out-door relief was, in 1848, no less than 1,870,000 and odd. The number of criminals in the same year was 30,000 and odd. In 1844, the number of lunatics in county asylums was 4000 and odd; while according to the Occupation Abstract of the returns of the population there were, in 1841, upwards of 5000 almspeople, 1000 beggars, and 21,000 pensioners: these formed into one sum, give us no less than two millions and a quarter individuals who pass their time without applying to any gainful occupation, and consequently live in a state of inactivity and vice upon the income of the remainder of the population. By the above computation, therefore, we see that out of a total of 16,000,000 souls, one-seventh, or 14 per cent of the whole, continue their existence either by pauperism, mendicancy, or crime. Now the cost of this immense mass of vice and want is even more appalling than the number of individuals subsisting in such utter degradation. The total amount of money levied in 1848 for the relief of England and Wales was seven millions four hundred thousand pounds; but, exclusive of this amount, the magnitude of the sum that we give voluntarily towards the support and education of the poor classes is unparalleled in the history of any other nation or any other time.

According to the summary of the returns annexed to the voluminous Reports of the Charity Commissioners, the rent of the land and other fixed property, together with the interest of the money left for charitable purposes in England and Wales, amounts to 1,200,000_l._ a year; and it is believed, by proper management, this return might be increased to an annual income of at least two millions of money; and yet, says Mr. M‘Culloch, “there can be no doubt that even this large sum falls far below the amount expended every year in voluntary donations to charitable establishments. Nor can any estimate be formed,” he adds, “of the money given in charity to individuals; but in the aggregate cannot fail to amount to an immense sum.” All things considered, therefore, we cannot be very far from the truth, if we assume that the sums voluntarily subscribed towards the relief of the poor equal, in the aggregate, the total amount raised by assessment for the same purpose; so that it appears that the well-to-do amongst us expend the vast sum of fifteen million pounds per annum in mitigating the miseries of their less fortunate brethren.

But though we give altogether fifteen million pounds a year to alleviate the distress of those who want or suffer, we must remember that this vast sum expresses not only the liberal extent of our sympathy, but likewise the fearful amount of want and suffering, of excess and luxury, that there must be in the land, if the poorer classes require fifteen millions to be added in charity every year to their aggregate income, in order to relieve their pains and privations, and the richer can afford to have the same immense sum taken from theirs, and yet scarcely feel the loss, it shows at once how much the one class must possess and the other want.

MEETING OF TICKET-OF-LEAVE MEN.

[Illustration: MEETING OF TICKET-OF-LEAVE MEN.

[From a Sketch.]

[See page 430. ]

A meeting of ticket-of-leave men, convened by Mr. H. Mayhew, was held some time since at the National Hall, Holborn, with the view of affording to persons of this class, who are anxious to lead a reformed life, an opportunity of stating the difficulties they have to encounter in their endeavour to obtain a honest livelihood. About fifty members of the body responded to Mr. Mayhew’s invitation. The men were admitted on presenting their tickets-of-leave, and were required on entrance to fill up the columns of a register, setting forth their ages, their occupations, the offence for which they were last convicted, their sentences, and the amount of instruction they had severally received. From the information thus collected, it appears that only 3 out of the 50 present were above the age of 40, the large majority ranging between 18 and 35, the highest age of all being 68; that they consisted of labourers, hawkers, costermongers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, carpenters, and other handicraftsmen; that their previous punishments varied from 2 years to 14 years’ transportation; and that more than one-half of them had been educated either at day schools or Sunday schools. Suspecting that the men would be unwilling to attend if the police presented themselves, either in the hall or at its entrance, Mr. Mayhew took the precaution to apply beforehand to the Metropolitan Commissioners on the subject. The authorities at once acceded to the request thus made to them, and not a solitary constable was permitted to overawe the meeting.

Mr. Mayhew, in opening the proceedings, said:--“The object of this meeting is threefold. In the first place, I wish society to know more about you as a distinct class; secondly, I wish the world to understand the working of the ticket-of-leave system; and, thirdly, I want to induce society to exert itself to assist you, and extricate you from your difficulties. When I first went among you, it was not very easy for me to make you comprehend the purpose I had in view. You at first fancied that I was a Government spy, or a person in some way connected with the police. I am none of these, nor am I a clergyman wishing to convert you to his particular creed, nor a teetotaler anxious to prove the source of all evil to be over-indulgence in intoxicating drink; but I am simply a literary man, desirous of letting the rich know something more about the poor. (Applause.) Some persons study the stars, others study the animal kingdom, others again direct their researches into the properties of stones, devoting their whole lives to these particular vocations. I am the first who has endeavoured to study a class of my fellow-creatures whom Providence has not placed in so fortunate a position as myself, my desire being to bring the extremes of society together--the poor to the rich, and the rich to the poor. (Applause.) I wish to get bodies of men together in a mass, their influence by that means being more sensibly felt than if they remain isolated. I know you, perhaps, nearly as well as many of you know yourselves. I have had many of you in my house with my wife and children, and to your honour and credit be it said, you never wronged me of the smallest article, and, moreover, I never heard a coarse word escape your lips. I have trusted many of you who have been long tried by want of food. I have given you money to get change for me, and you never yet took advantage of me. This shows that there is still a spark of good in each of you. That spark I wish Society to develope, that you may be made what all must really desire to see you. Some two or three Sundays ago I was at Pentonville prison during Divine service. Society believes you to be hardened in heart and unimpressionable. Well, I saw some four hundred prisoners there weeping like children at the melting tale which the clergyman told. He spoke of the burial of a girl by torchlight, at which he officiated, explaining that the reason why the funeral took place so late was that the father of the deceased had to come about fifty miles to be present, and thence the delay. The old man’s tears, he said, fell like rain on the coffin-lid; and yet, in his anguish, the bereaved parent exclaimed that he preferred to see his daughter a corpse than for her to live a life of infamy in the streets. (Sensation.) This sad story could not fail to touch a chord in each of your breasts. But to come to the ticket-of-leave system. The public generally believe that it is a most dangerous thing to set you free under that system. I know this is one of the most important experiments in connexion with the reformation of offenders that has ever been tried, and it has worked better than any other of which I have had experience. In 1853, the old mode of transportation was changed, and an Act passed directing that no person should be sentenced to transportation except for fourteen years or upwards, and that thenceforward sentence of penal servitude should be substituted for transportation for less than fourteen years. At the same time, a discretionary power was given to commute sentences of transportation into terms of penal servitude. Then, for the first time, was it ordained that it should be lawful for her Majesty, under the seal of her secretary of state, to grant any convict, now or hereafter sentenced to transportation, or to the punishment substituted for it, a license to be at large in the United Kingdom, or such part thereof as is expressed in the license, during a portion of his term of imprisonment. The holder of this license is not to be imprisoned by reason of his previous sentence; but if his license is revoked, he is to be apprehended and re-committed. Since the passing of that Act, and between September 1853 and December 31, 1855--a period of about two years and a quarter--the number of convicts released from public works and prisons has been 3880. To this number have to be added juveniles from Parkhurst prison, 297; and convicts from Bermuda and Gibraltar, 435: making a total of 4612. Of this aggregate, 140 have had their licenses revoked, and 118 have been sentenced to penal servitude and imprisonment; making together 258 who have had their licenses cancelled out of the entire 4612. Out of this 258, 27 were committed for breach of the vagrancy law, 20 for ordinary assaults, 8 for assaults on the police, 6 for breach of the game-laws, 2 for desertion from the militia, and 20 for misdemeanour; making together 84, and leaving 174 as the exact number who have relapsed into their former course of life. Thus it appears that only five and a-half per cent of the whole number of tickets-of-leave granted have been revoked. Now, considering that the number of re-committals to prison for England and Wales averages thirty-three in every hundred prisoners; this, I think, is a very favourable result of the ticket-of-leave experiment. Looking at the extreme difficulty of a return to an honest life, it is almost astonishing that so low a per-centage as five and a half of the licenses in all England should have been revoked. You know that, during your imprisonment, there are four stages of probation. In certain prisons you have to do a prescribed amount of work, for which you receive a certain gratuity. The shoemakers, for instance, get 4_d._ every week if they make two and a-half pairs, 6_d._ for three pairs, and 8_d._ for four pairs. The tailors get 4_d._ if they make two suits of prison garments, 6_d._ for three suits, and 8_d._ for four. The matmakers get 4_d._ for thirty-six square feet of their work, 6_d._ for forty-five feet, and 8_d._ for fifty-four. The cotton-weavers get 4_d._ for twenty-four yards, 6_d._ for thirty, and 8_d._ for thirty-six. The cloth-weavers are paid in a similar manner. These sums are entered to your credit, and pass with you from prison to prison until they at last accumulate into an amount, which is handed over to you under certain restrictions on leaving. In the second stage of probation, you receive 6_d._ in addition to the ordinary weekly gratuity; in the third stage you receive an addition of 9_d._; and in the fourth stage one of 1_s._ or 1_s._ 3_d._ This sum--large or small, according to the term of imprisonment--is placed to your credit on quitting the prison, and is thus distributed:--5_l._ to be paid immediately on discharge, or by post-office order on the convict’s arrival at his native place. If the sum is over 5_l._ and under 8_l._ he receives 4_l._ on his discharge, and the balance at the end of two months; if over 8_l._ and under 12_l._, half is paid on his discharge and the balance at the end of three months; if over 12_l._ and under 20_l._, 5_l._ is paid on his discharge, half the balance in two months, and the remainder in three months. In order, however, to obtain this balance, it is necessary for you to be provided with certificates as to character, either from a clergyman, a magistrate, or the employer with whom the holder of the license is then at work. The applicants for these balances have been 1242 in number up to the 31st December last. Of these, 1225 have sent in certificates of a satisfactory nature, only 17 having been sent in of a contrary character--851 certificates were furnished by clergymen, 214 by magistrates, and 177 by employers under whom the persons liberated were engaged. In the 1225 cases above-mentioned, after the expiration of the prescribed number of months, the money was paid to the applicants. Considering the difficulty these persons must experience in obtaining the certificates required of them, the figures I have stated are highly satisfactory as to the working of the system; and I cannot, therefore, understand how society should have gone so far astray on this point as it has done. The public, however, believe ticket-of-leave men to be very dangerous characters--it does not know the training they undergo while in prison. A high authority tells me, that it is impossible for a gentleman’s son to be trained with greater care at Eton or at any of the other public schools than each of you have been. When, however, Society sees two or three, or even some half-dozen of you relapse into your former practices, they jump to the conclusion that the same is the case with you all. They, in fact, think that relapses are the rule and amendment the exception, instead of the fact being quite the other way. This is like the self-delusion of the London apprentices, who fancy there are more wet Sundays in a year than rainy week-days, simply because they want to get out on Sundays, and are particularly vexed when the bad weather keeps them at home. (Laughter.) Now I have tried many experiments at the reformation of criminals, and one-half of them have failed. Yet I am not discouraged; for I know how difficult it is for men to lay aside their past habits. Every allowance ought, therefore, to be made, because they cannot be expected to become angels in a moment. The vice of the present system, in fact, is, that unless a criminal suddenly becomes a pattern man, and at once forgets all his old associates, Society will have none of you, and, as a certain gentleman has expressed it, ‘you must all be shot down, and thrown into Society’s dust-bin.’ (Applause.) A well-known literary gentleman, who had moved in good society, had a daughter, with whom he lived at the east end of London. He was rather lax, perhaps, in the rearing of his child, allowing her to do pretty much as she liked. She once went to a concert, and got acquainted with a ‘mobsman,’ who accompanied her home, and at last introduced himself to her father as his daughter’s suitor. Being a well-dressed, respectable-looking person, the father--good, easy man!--took a liking for him, and not being particular in his inquiries as to the lover’s course of life, allowed them to marry. After their marriage, however, the daughter discovered what her husband’s pursuits really were. She, of course, acquainted her father with the fact, who, in great distress of mind, called his son-in-law to him, and telling him that he had never had a stain upon his name or character, implored him by every argument he could urge to lead an honest life. The mobsman promised to comply. His father-in-law removed him from the neighbourhood in which he was staying, and placed him in the service of a large railway carrier. In this employ, having one day to take a parcel to a gentleman’s house, up-stairs on the mantelpiece he saw a gold watch. This temptation was too much for him, and he seized the article and put it into his pocket. The theft was discovered before the offender had gone any distance; the man was soon arrested, but the father, by dint of great exertion, got him off, on returning the watch and communicating with its owner before the complaint was made at the police-office. The father again entreated his son-in-law to abandon his evil courses, but the latter said his old associations were too strong for him, and that he saw no other resource open for him than to leave London altogether. The old man accordingly took him with him to a residence on the banks of the Thames, where, at length, some of his old companions unfortunately met him, and told him of a ‘crib’ they were going to ‘crack,’ and of the heavy ‘swag’ they were likely to get. The prodigal’s old habits were again too much for him. He accompanied his former associates in their criminal enterprise, was captured, and thrown again into prison--his father-in-law died in a mad-house, and his wife committed suicide. Thus fearful, then, are the effects of criminal associations, and therefore I am only surprised that so small a per-centage of the ticket-of-leave men have yielded to a relapse. Successful, however, as the system has thus far proved, I yet see a considerable amount of evil in connexion with it; and this is the reason why I have called you together, hoping that some of the tales you have to relate will serve to rouse the public to a sense of your real position, and induce them to stretch forth a hand to save you from the ruin that on every hand threatens you. When you come out of prison, destitute as you are of character, there are only two or three kinds of employment open to you, and I therefore wish Society to institute some association to watch over you, to give you every possible advice, to lead you to good courses, and, moreover, to provide you with the means of getting some honest livelihood. (Applause.) I know that as a class you are distinguished mainly by your love of a roving life, and that at the bottom of all your criminal practices lies your indisposition to follow any settled occupation. Continuous employment of a monotonous nature is so irksome to you, that immediately you engage in it you long to break away from it. This, I believe, after long observation of your character, to be true of the majority of you; and you are able to judge if I am right in this conclusion. Society, however, expects, that if you wish to better yourselves, you will at once settle down as steadily as it does, and immediately conform to all its notions; but I am satisfied that if anything effectual is to be done in the way of reforming you, Society must work in consonance and not in antagonism with your nature. In this connexion it appears to me that the great outlet for you is street-trading, where you are allowed to roam at will unchafed by restraints not congenial to your habits and feelings. In such pursuits a small fund for stock-money suffices, and besides, no character is required for those who engage in them. From the inquiries made by a gentleman who lately visited the places in which most of you live, I find that the great majority of you follow some form or other of street occupation. Still there is this difficulty in your way. The public requires its thoroughfares to be kept clear of obstruction, and I know that the police have been ordered to drive you away--to make you, as the phrase is, ‘move on.’ You may fancy that the police act thus of their own accord; but I learn from communication with the Commissioners, that the police have to receive requisitions from the shopkeepers and other inhabitants to enforce the Street Act, and are compelled to comply with them. In one instance a tradesman living in a street-market, where about five hundred poor persons were obtaining a livelihood, complained to the police of the obstruction thus occasioned to his business, which was of a ‘fashionable’ nature. The consequence was that the thoroughfare had to be cleared, and these five hundred persons were reduced almost to a state of starvation, and many of them were forced into the workhouse. Now I don’t believe that this is right; and I am prepared to say to Society, that no one man in the kingdom should have the power to deprive so large a body of poor persons of all means of gaining an honest subsistence. (Loud applause.) At the same time, certain regulations must be respected; the streets even, you will allow, must not be blocked--(hear, hear)--there must be a free passage, and it is necessary to consider whether a plan may not be devised which will answer both ends. It strikes me that a certain number of poor men’s markets might be established very advantageously; for the poor are so linked together that they would rather buy of the poor than the rich; and it is much to their credit that it is so. If spots of ground for markets of this kind were bought by benevolent individuals, and a small toll levied on admission to them, I am sure the speculation would be profitable to those who embarked in it, as well as beneficial to the interests--moral as well as pecuniary--of the street traders. Connected with these establishments there ought to be a school for the children of the traders, a bank for preserving your money, a cook-shop to prevent you from being obliged to take your meals at the public-house, together with many other useful adjuncts which might be grouped round the market. Such experiments have been tried before now. There is the old Rag-fair at Houndsditch, where formerly old clothes were sold in the streets. In that case a Jew bought a piece of land, to which poor traders were admitted on payment of a halfpenny per head, and the project succeeded so admirably that the owner of the ground soon became a rich man. At Paris similar markets have been instituted, and with success, by M. Delamarre; and in the same city there are also public kitchens, where cooked meat can be had at a cheap rate, so as to keep the poor people out of the public-houses. Lodging-houses for such of the men as choose to come to them would likewise be a valuable appendage to the suggested street-markets, but they must be free from the almost tyrannical supervision which prevails in the existing model lodging-houses in London. Whilst so much vexatious restriction is put upon men’s liberties, they cannot be expected to frequent these places in the numbers they otherwise would. Lodging-houses for the reception of ticket-of-leave men on leaving prison might prevent them from being thrown loose upon the world until they have some prospect of a livelihood before them. I wish Society to take these men by the hand--to be lenient and considerate towards them, and not to be annoyed if one or two should recede from their good resolutions; for the experience of the reformatory institutions of London shows that there are often twenty-five per cent of relapses among their inmates. Therefore, if only five and a-half per cent of you fail in your laudable endeavours, as the returns I have quoted show, to be the whole proportion, then I say that you are a class who ought to be encouraged. By this means we shall be able to grapple effectually with this great trouble--viz. how to reform the great bulk of our criminals. Under these circumstances I have invited you here to-night, to give you an opportunity of telling Society what are your difficulties. There is a gentleman present who will publish your grievances all over the kingdom, and I charge you all to speak only the truth. You cannot benefit by any other course, and therefore be you a check the one upon the other; and if any one departs from the strict fact, do you pull him up. Thus you will show the world that you have met here with an earnest desire to better yourselves--thus you will present a spectacle that will go far to convince Society that it runs no risk in giving you your liberty--and prevail upon it to regard not wholly without compassion the few members of your class who, yielding in an evil hour to the trying temptations which beset them, sink unhappily into their former delinquencies.” (Loud and prolonged applause.)

The men were then requested to ascend the platform, and relate their own experience, as well as to state their views of how their class could best be assisted. The first to respond to this invitation was a young man of neat and comparatively respectable appearance, who seemed to be known to the rest by the name of ‘Peter,’ and who, with great fluency and considerable propriety of expression, proceeded to narrate his own past career as follows:--

“Friends, I hope you will excuse any hesitation or stammering on my part while I stand in this unusual position. All the education I have received has been picked up in prison--understand that. As to the difficulties encountered by ticket-of-leave men I know nothing, save from my own personal experience. You cannot judge properly of the intentions of the convict, unless you begin with his career from the first time that he enters prison. Well, you must know, that I was transported for seven years. I was sent to Millbank, and there put to the tailoring business. From the outset I had a great partiality for books, and I then learnt to read and write better than I could do before. I also acquired a little grammar and arithmetic, simply to improve my mind; and if mental improvement is any part of moral improvement, I was, of course, morally improving also. I knew more arithmetic then than I do now, having lost my knowledge in consequence of excessive indulgence in intoxicating liquors. In fact, I got as far as the beginning of algebra--certainly a very abstruse science to tackle. After spending fourteen months in Millbank I went to Portland, where I had to wheel barrows from morning to night. I still persevered, however, with my books; and the great anxiety that constantly weighed on my mind was, what would become of me when I was liberated. I knew that the work I was doing would be well done; and I was far happier then than I am now, because I feel that there is no breakfast for me to-morrow morning till I go and thieve it; and that is the simple truth. (Applause.) I supposed that if I went to the Chaplain, who had delivered several charitable discourses, very much in accordance with my own feelings, he might assist me. I therefore stated my case to him, telling him that I really wished to become a better member of society. He listened to my tale, and wished me to see him once a-week, which I did. But the Chaplain at this time was the Rev. Mr. Moran (as we understood), and when I wanted books he would not encourage me, unless I consented to become a communicant. If I had done that I should have had more favour shown to me, and been provided with whatever I wished; but not feeling myself fit for such a thing, I therefore refused. I then waited till a change took place, and the Rev. Mr. Ubridge, (as we understood), a lover of science and literature, came--a clergyman whose system was altogether different, having none of these Roman Catholic restrictions. We were then allowed to think and do as we liked in regard to religion, and no man was forced to attend the communion-table unless he thought himself as fit for it as the Minister. I applied to the new Chaplain, and told him I considered my mind to have been much enlightened. I suppose everybody fancies the same, who knows a little, though not much. When my turn to be liberated approached they came to me in my separate cell, and I told them there was no chance of my bettering myself unless I could get an honest living. I said that I must go back to London, where I had first been transported, and that the only thing I expected was to be transported again; for my bad character would be no recommendation to me--the police all knew me, and wherever they saw me they would point me out as a ticket-of-leave man. (Applause.) On my release I received 6_l._ 12_s._ I came to Southampton with one of the officers of the establishment, who was kind enough to ask me to take a drop of brandy. Not having had any spirits for four years previous, this little got into my head, and having drank another glass or two I was intoxicated, and I spent all my money that night--yes, and got locked up into the bargain. (Laughter.) If I did not quite spend all my money myself, somebody else helped me to spend it. I came to London without a farthing. I hadn’t a friend in the world, and even at present, if I want a meal, I have no one to say ‘Here it is for you.’ What is a man in such a case, being without work, to do? Is he to starve? Well, I wore out two pairs of shoes, walking the streets for three months together, looking for a situation, but all in vain; and I became as emaciated as this post, (pointing to the pillar of the lamp on the platform,) having had nothing better than a bit of bread and a herring to eat, and not one ounce of animal food during all that period. I had a little pride, which kept me from begging. All the good feelings engendered in prison passed away. I returned to my old companions, with whom I went for about two months, when I was at length caught, and received another twelvemonth’s imprisonment, which expired only last Monday fortnight. During the two months I was with my old companions I got a good living--I could always make my 5_l._ or 6_l._ a-week by practices which I did not like, but which I was driven to adopt, because the public would not let me earn 1_l._ honestly. Since, however, I received the card of admission to this meeting, I have not put my hand to a dishonest act, and if the promise it holds out is fulfilled I never will. I have little more to say. I attended here to-night in the hope of reaping some permanent benefit, and also to encourage those who, like myself, wish to become honest members of society. (Applause.) I trust the benevolent gentleman who has so humanely interested himself in this cause will be successful in his exertions on behalf of a body of unfortunate and persecuted beings, who, I should say, are more knocked about by the police, and more discouraged by the opinions of the public at large, than any other class in the United Kingdom. (Applause.) May God and right reason direct this movement, and bring it to a speedy and prosperous issue.” (Loud cheers greeted “Peter,” as he descended from the “tribune.”)

The next spokesman was a thin-faced and diminutive, but shrewd-looking costermonger, of about twenty-five years of age, and tidier in appearance than many of his class, who said:--“Friends, I am only a little one, and you can’t expect much from me; indeed, ‘Peter’ hasn’t left me much to say. I will, however, begin at the beginning. At the age of ten I was left without father or mother, and others here could say the same. I was taught to get a living by selling oranges in the streets, and I kept at that for twelve months. I was afterwards induced to go along with a few Westminster boys, who went about thieving; and I had nobody to look after me. Having no friend, I nevertheless always got a good ‘lift’ from the police. I was soon arrested, and at Newgate received seven years’ transportation. I spent three years and seven months at the Isle of Wight, and eleven months at Portsmouth. I would not have been kept so long at the Isle of Wight if I had been religious; but as I could not act the hypocrite I was obliged to give up this religion. During this time I never took the sacrament, as they wanted me to do. Well, I gets my liberty, and I had several pounds put into my hands when I left. I came to London-bridge station, and thought it was the Waterloo station, and fancying I was near Westminster, I looked about for the Victoria Theatre. A chap then said to me, ‘You had better not be seen in those clothes.’ I afterwards changed my dress and sold the other clothes. I soon found myself with only about three half-crowns in my pocket. My only friend was a cousin, who was engaged in buying hare-skins and rabbit-skins about the streets, and he recommended me to do the same. This was in the winter time, and I hardly knew one kind of skin from another. However, I did pretty well at this for two or three weeks; when, one day, as I was walking with a sack of skins upon my back through Tothill-street, Westminster, two policemen came up to me, and demanded to look into my bag. Rather than consent to this I went to the Police Court along with them. When I got there a policeman said to the inspector, that I was a ‘ticket-of-leave,’ and had something in my sack. I insisted on seeing the magistrate, and the inspector brought me to him, but instead of allowing me to speak to his worship, he spoke first, saying that I was very violent and saucy, and a ‘ticket-of-leave.’ Instead of hearing what I had to say under these circumstances, the magistrate, too, burst out, ‘Oh, you are an insolent fellow, and a disgrace to society; if the Secretary of State knew of your doings, he would banish you.’ And his worship, also muttering something about sending me to ‘quod’ for contempt of court, I thought it better to ‘hook it.’ During two years and a-half of my term at the Isle of Wight, having learnt something of shoemaking, I now travelled down to Northampton, but could get no work because I had no tools. Even what I did know of the trade was not enough to enable me to get a living by it. I then went on to Derby, and was near starving. I had no lodging. I was not quite so proud as ‘Peter,’ for I went up to a gentleman and told him the strength of it. I said, I am a ‘ticket-of-leave.’ He hardly understood me, but I tried to explain it to him, and he gave me a shilling. With this aid I got my shirt washed, put myself to rights, polished my boots, and up I goes to a magistrate to see what he would say about it. I told him I wanted to go to London, and could not walk all the way. This magistrate can tell whether I am now speaking the truth. I got an interview with him at Derby, and told him I was a ticket-of-leave man. He would scarcely believe me, and imagined rather that I was a returned convict. The police jeering me, said, ‘How well polished his boots are! but we think him an impostor.’ So, with no other help than the shilling I had obtained, I trudged along in my misery until, with the worms and maggots gnawing my belly, I reached London. Here my cousin got me into the ‘market’ again, and I married last Christmas twelvemonth, and have one child. I am now just managing to ‘crack an honest crust;’ and while I can do that I will never thieve more. (Applause.) I am not much of a talker, therefore I can only hope that the kind gentleman who has called us together will succeed in his praiseworthy endeavours to secure fair-play to our ill-used class. I have nothing more to say.” (Loud cheers.)

The third speaker was a stonemason, of about thirty, and of a honest and industrious aspect, who said:--“My friends, I have but little to say regarding myself. I was sent away from Newgate to Wakefield in 1851, and put to work. As to gratuity money given to convicts, certainly none was allowed at Wakefield while I was there. As to our treatment there and at other places, I can say that I never had a bit of sweet meat all the time I was at Wakefield. I never had anything but mince-meat chopped up, always green, and others can testify to the same thing. One man got three days of bread and water for complaining of this. After staying thirteen months at Wakefield I went to Portsmouth, where I remained about three years and a half, during which time I certainly worked hard. There the treatment of the men differs greatly, according to their conduct. A man who behaves well is treated well; but those of a volatile spirit are treated badly. For myself I never had a report made against me all the time I was there, and I obtained my liberty under ticket-of-leave, although I was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, at the end of four years and four months. A few others, who came later than I did, were fortunate enough to get their freedom about the same time. I was not jealous about that, but was glad to get away myself. I had a mother and sister to go to; and though my sister was in employment, I did not cost them anything. I got work at my own trade, and experienced few of the hardships which most of my class do when first liberated. I know one poor man who said this meeting was the last place that he would come to, as it would expose him. He has worked five weeks for a person in Gray’s-Inn-lane. He had been in good circumstances, was a clerk, and under the eye of a minister. He had to sleep in a place where the vermin crawled over his bed, and he had to get up in the night and remove his clothes to keep them clean. For the five weeks he has been at work he has scarcely had the barest necessaries of subsistence. I have been to see this man every Sunday, and can safely say that he has not had sixpence in his pocket ever since he has been out of prison. He was engaged at fire-work making, but this trade becoming slack after the 5th of November, he was thrown upon the streets again. I will not say what became of the man afterwards, because that is not necessary. I will merely mention that he is now struggling on, depending entirely on the public for a meal of victuals. I have myself been to work in the city for two months, and have not been intoxicated once. I am not fond of drink. I am steady and mean to continue so, and I trust every one here will resolve to do the same, for you will find it much more to your comfort. I am fortunate enough to be able to earn a livelihood at my trade as a mason; but though I am not in want myself, I could not refrain from coming here to throw what light I could on this subject, and showing my readiness to help others who are in distress.” (Applause.)

The next who mounted the platform was an elderly man, evidently much reduced in circumstances. He stated--“I am a dock-labourer, and in 1848 was convicted, though innocent, at the Old Bailey. I was within three miles of the place where the robbery of which I was accused was committed. I was certainly in company with the female who was robbed three hours before the theft occurred; but I had no hand in it, and yet I was sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation. I passed my first eleven months at Millbank; then I went to Woolwich, and next to Gibraltar. At the latter place Mr. Armstrong is the overseer of the convicts, and he is the severest man ever known; not a worse being in the Australian or any penal settlements. Flogging went on there from before daylight till long after dark. I was six years and eight months under his system, and I received 4_l._ 14_s._ 6_d._ on leaving Gibraltar, 2_l._ 10_s._ of which was stopped to pay my passage to England. When I came home I strived as hard as any man to get an honest livelihood. I tried every experiment--I went all up and down Whitechapel, but no, the police would not allow me--they picked me out as a marked man. Then I worked fifteen or sixteen months at the Docks, but lately that employment has been very slack, and I have tried all the offices in vain for the last fortnight. I leave you to consider, therefore, what a man is to do when he strives to get a living and can’t. No man in all London has seen more trouble than I have. In 1840 I got three years’ imprisonment. When I came out a man borrowed my coat to walk through the City with, and next day, as I was going past Bow Church, I was taken up for a robbery which that man had committed, my coat being sworn to, as it had a stain on the collar. I was taken before Alderman Gibbs that morning, and fully committed for trial; and when I appeared at Newgate I got twelve months in the Compter gaol, though innocent. I had not been three months out of the Compter before I was taken up for beating a policeman, who said I threw a stone at him, but I never did. A fortnight afterwards the man who did it got fourteen days, and I gets two years for it, though I was not nigh the place. No man in London has suffered as I have done wrongfully, and none has been so ‘worked up’ as I am at this moment. For the last fortnight the winds have been such as to prevent a single ship from coming up the Channel, and morning after morning between five hundred and six hundred men regularly wait at the Docks for employment and cannot get it. When I am employed, it is at the West Quay; but the permanent labourers are served first. Such men as I have very little chance, as they bring persons from the other side of the Dock sooner than engage ‘casualty’ labourers. During the eighteen months that have elapsed since I came from Gibraltar, I have walked the streets of London whole days without breaking my fast; and since twelve o’clock yesterday up to this moment I have not done so. I really wish, sir, that something could be done for us all.”

Mr. Mayhew asked the men whether they thought the formation of a society, and a system by which those who were in work could assist those who were out of it, would benefit them?

To this many voices answered, “Yes! yes!”

Mr. Mayhew continued: “I know that if your stock-money is once gone you are completely helpless. A man who had been tried for his life and sent to Australia came to me one day, when let out of prison, with a loaf under his arm, and said, ‘This is all I have got to keep me, and if I ask for work there is a policeman at my heels to tell every one that I am a returned convict.’ His case became desperate, when, about the time of the Great Exhibition, I offered to give him a little money if he would pledge me his word to do all that he could to lead an honest life. He shook hands with me, and promised to do so. He then had cards printed, and tried to make a living by selling gelatine sweets. After a little time he took a small huckster’s shop, and subsequently married a lodging-house keeper, and has since been doing very well. I know that the period between the ages of twenty-five and fifty is the time when a roving life has its strongest attractions; but after that, when a man is hunted like a dog, he gets tired of it. I have seen frequent examples of this, and known whole families of poor people, with only sixpence at their command, to invest that small sum in sprats, and live a month upon it by turning it over and over.

“I once took a poor boy (a young thief) and got him a place at the Daily News office, when the printer and editor told me he was as good and as well-behaved as any boy on that establishment. The difficulty, however, was to separate him from his old ‘pals.’ He got among them on an Easter Monday, and was found picking pockets at a fair, and taken to prison; it was ‘all up with him’ till he had seen the misery of his course of life, but I am sure, if taken by the hand, he will ultimately become a good member of society. I mention this to show, that if a little leniency and kindness are evinced towards the men we may beat down the crime of the country to an enormous extent. But we must not fancy it possible that such persons can be made model-men in an instant. Indeed, I believe that the disposition shown to make converts to religion of you produces a large amount of hypocrisy. (Cries of Yes! yes!) If this leads you to become better men, in Heaven’s name, say so; but if it engenders the worst form of evil, let it be exposed. That there are such things as miracles of instantaneous reformation, I don’t deny; but the first thing wanted is some society to give men what will keep them from starving, clothe them, and find them in a lodging; and when they are thus placed in decent comfort, and made, as a necessary consequence, more kindly in their nature, other people may then come to them and try to make them religious. To attempt, however, to proselytise men who are famishing, appears to me a mockery and a delusion, and only the most depraved class of criminals would, I believe, yield to it.” (Applause.)

The fifth ticket-of-leave man who addressed the assembly was a man of middle stature, slightly made, and between twenty-five and thirty. He said:--

“I was sentenced to seven years’ transportation at the Old Bailey. I went to Wakefield and can confirm the statement of a previous speaker, that no gratuities are allowed there. I next went to Portsmouth, where I remained two years and two months, when I was discharged on ticket-of-leave. I returned to the neighbourhood from whence I was committed. A master who promised to give me constant employment had before this given me a certificate. I was discharged about eighteen months ago. Whilst I was at work for my master a female came up to me and asked me if I had seen two other women pass. I answered, ‘No,’ when she invited me to have something to drink; and knowing the female, I accepted her offer. While walking with her, only two doors from where I lived, a policeman came up and took us both into custody. This, I suppose, was because I was known to be a returned convict. The woman was charged with being concerned with others of her own sex with robbing a gentleman, and on being searched a portion of the money was found on her, but none on me. Moreover, the gentleman stating that there was no man engaged in the theft, I was discharged. I then resumed work, but was taken again upon a charge of burglary. Many of you may have heard of the case. I was in my shirt-sleeves when I was arrested. The case was tried before Mr. Brenham. I did not deny my name, and being a ticket-of-leave man I was remanded for a week. I was afterwards brought up and re-examined, and after a careful investigation I was discharged. If there had been the slightest suspicion attaching to me, from my character being known, I must have been either imprisoned for three months, or committed for trial. I again returned to my work, but in three weeks afterwards I was dragged out of my bed and locked up for three hours in the Bagnigge-wells station, whence I was taken to Bow-street. Three policemen had burst my bedroom-door open before six o’clock in the morning, and while it was yet dark. They said they wanted me, because I had been concerned with a female in the robbery which had occurred two nights previous, on Pentonville-hill. The inspector told me he had received an order from the Secretary of State to send me back to Portsmouth prison, my license being revoked. When I got to Bow-street I was placed before Mr. Hall, not in open court, but in a private room. That gentleman also told me that my license had been revoked, on the alleged grounds that I was living by dishonest means. I was sent back to prison accordingly; but through the intercession of my brother--a married man, who showed that I had been working for twelve months--I was again released. There was no just ground whatever for sending me back to prison. I have only been home a fortnight, and having no tools I don’t know what to do. The master who employed me before has got another man.”

MR. MAYHEW here remarked, that it would be a great encouragement to Society to help them, if those who were doing well assisted those who were doing badly; whereupon

PETER observed that “it was little help that the one could possibly give to the other. An Association (he said) was what was wanted, whereby the men’s present urgent necessities could be relieved before they fell into mischief. A few days after a man’s liberation he generally found that he had acted foolishly, and returned to his senses. If, therefore, a society took him by the hand, and gave him temporary shelter and counsel, it would be the best thing that could happen to him.”

Those of the lads and men present who had been left without father or mother from an early age, were then requested to hold up their hands; when twenty out of the forty-eight did so.

A lame blacksmith and fitter, of about forty, whose garb and complexion were in strict keeping with his craft, and who spoke with not a few grains of stern bitterness in his tone, next mounted the rostrum. He said: “I have been transported, and am a ‘spotted man,’ with whom the police can do as they like. I was a long time at Dartmoor, one of the hardest convict stations a man can go to, and I did the prison work there. I went there in 1851, when an eminent doctor, Mr. McIntosh, belonged to the place, but having good health I did not need his assistance. While in the infirmary on several occasions, but not for illness, I saw the medicine that was given to the patients. It was only a large bottle of salts. I have known a man to be cut out of his hammock, taken down-stairs, and buried, all in three hours; and I have heard the doctor say of a sick man, ‘Let him drink out of a pail till he bursts.’ (Some sensation.) I was a privileged man because I was handy, and fitted up almost the whole iron-work of the place. Once some books were pilfered; and at dinner-time there was a general turn over and search at parade. The ‘searcher’ was a very sedate man, at least in the eyes of the Governor, but he was the most malicious person that ever stripped. After feeling the pockets of the man next to me, this person called me out, and, contrary to the rule, took me into the yard and stripped me naked. I remonstrated, and wished him to choose a place not in the open air, but for this I was ordered to a cell, and while on my way there he borrowed a sword from an officer--the foreman of the smith’s shop--and made a cut at me with the back edge of the weapon, inflicting a wound of eighteen inches long. I went to my cell, and next morning I was, to my astonishment, charged with attempting to knock this very man down with a hammer! The Governor would not hear a word that I had to say. I was inspected by the doctor, and then put back, to appear afterwards before the directors. The charge against me was wholly false. The foreman of the smith’s shop was a straightforward man, and when applied to about my character, he told the governor that a quieter man, and one more capable of doing his work than me, he could not wish to see. The accuser could not look me in the face; but if the foreman spoke the truth to the directors,--and he was a man who would speak nothing else,--he would have been sure to have his band removed from his cap. So, instead of my being taken before the directors, I was sent to my dinner; and I never received the least redress for the wrongs I endured.

“Before returning home I was classed as a permanent invalid, and yet I was kept at work on iron-work of three tons weight. After acting four years as a mechanic and a ‘first-rater’ at Dartmoor, I got invalided pay, and went home with about 7_l._ in my pocket. That is all the reward given to a good workman and well-conducted man at Dartmoor. I have heard much of Wakefield, and believe the system there will reform any man. It has a first-rate character; but as to Dartmoor, a man leaving it can have no reformation in him. At Dartmoor, when visitors wish to try the prisoners’ soup, a basin of nice beef tea, standing smoking on the hob, and fit to show gentlemen, is offered them to taste. But this is not the soup which is really given to the convicts; that is merely a little rice and water. In fact, Dartmoor is one of the most villanous places a man can be put into. You have there to swab up two or three pails of water before you can rise in the morning. The brutality practised is terrible; and remember, when a man is prejudiced against the treatment he receives, no permanent improvement of his character is possible. Let any Dartmoor man here get up and deny what I say about the place, if he can. The aristocracy fancy that it is an excellent convict station, but it is not. I have seen clean and comfortable-looking men taken off parade, because they would not do an officer’s dirty work, and conducted to a covered passage, from which they have not come out again until they did so with faces cut about and bleeding, and with clothes all torn to pieces. I don’t say that all the other convict establishments are like Dartmoor. I have seen bodies of seventy and eighty men come there from Wakefield--good-intentioned persons, and evidently having undergone religious impressions, to judge by their regularly kneeling down to prayers; but Dartmoor must contaminate them, and make them worse than ever before they leave it. I never had any particular religious feelings myself while at Dartmoor; but I am sure that a pious life is the most comfortable one under the canopy of heaven. I was very wrongfully sent away to that penal establishment. I had never been convicted before; and my only offence was being concerned in a tap-room drunken fight, for which I was charged with a misdemeanour. It was stated that I intended to do a man some grievous bodily harm, but it was proved that I had no weapon at the time larger than a penny-piece. I only left Dartmoor six or seven months ago. If I were in work, I should be most happy to give my mite towards the society that this gentleman (Mr. Mayhew) speaks of, for the benefit of the poor ticket-of-leave men; but the slackness of trade has thrown me out for the last month, and I have maintained myself and four others who are on my hands for half-a-year.”

The concluding speaker was a young and cleanly-looking working man, of prepossessing address, who stated:--“I have experienced considerable oppression from the police, who, I think, want as much showing up as anybody. In January, 1852, I was sentenced to seven years’ transportation. I stopped at the House of Correction for some time, and then went to Northampton borough gaol, where I lay eleven months. Thence I was sent to Woolwich, where I stayed about two years and five months, and was employed in dragging timber from one end of the yard to the other. However, I did very well there, and I find no fault with the place. When I got my liberty I returned home, where I had a father and mother and a sister; but as they were in humble circumstances, I did not like to throw myself on them for my support, and so I looked about for something to do. I am now keeping company with a young woman. One night as I was going home, at half-past twelve, after sitting some hours with her and her father, a policeman suddenly comes up to me, and tapping me on the shoulder, says: ‘Holloa, George; so here you are! Mind I don’t send you somewhere else for twelve months.’ I answered: ‘So you may, when I have given you occasion for it.’ My landlord saw us, and said that I had done nothing. ‘No,’ said the policeman, ‘or I would not allow him to go free;’ and he then told me to move on. My young woman’s father keeps a barber’s shop; and this policeman goes up to him and acquaints him with my character, asking him whether he is aware that the young man his daughter keeps company with is a returned convict. The father tells her of it, at least she gives me broad hints that imply as much. This man then shows me up, and exposes me several times to the tradesmen in my neighbourhood. I then see what I can do. I cannot get a certificate of character, and I try to write one myself. Then I get several months’ imprisonment, and now I have been out seven weeks. But I have not done anything dishonest. Still, if it goes on like this, I am sure I must be compelled to do that. A fortnight ago, as I was going home, the same policeman again interfered with me, and I was obliged to put up with his insults. Last week I wrote a letter to the captain of the hulks at Woolwich, telling him of the oppression I suffer. I received a letter from the chaplain, of course containing religious advice, but the answer I obtained from the captain of the hulks was, that the next time I am insulted I should write to him again, when he will acquaint the Secretary of State with it, and put it down, if possible. How can we hope to get employment from any tradesmen, if the policemen persist in telling who we are? I know that if I were an independent gentleman myself, I would not trust a man who had no reference of some kind.”

MR. MAYHEW: “We will now break up this meeting. I will let you know when to meet again. When I can arrange the formation of a committee of gentlemen willing to connect themselves with the undertaking I have sketched out, we can hold another assemblage in public. (Cheers.) In the meantime, if I can assist any of you with the loan of a few shillings--but, mind you, come to me gently, and not thick and fast--I will do what I can to help you. (Hear, hear.) I am a person who work myself for all I get, and remember I call myself a ‘shilling man,’ and not one of your ‘sovereign people’ (Laughter); and when I say ‘a loan,’ I want you all to feel that by doing your best to repay me, you will enable me to extend the same assistance to a greater number of your class. (Hear, hear.) Colonel Jebb looks on you almost with the eye of a father, and it touches him to the quick to hear of any of you relapsing. I trust that we shall prove successful in our object; but let me in conclusion entreat you all to adhere faithfully to your good resolves; and I hope you will find far greater happiness in pursuing honest courses than dishonest ones.” (Cheers.)

The meeting, which lasted from eight o’clock to half-past ten, and was most orderly throughout, then quietly dispersed.

INDEX.

Acrobats, or street-performers, 90

Actors, strolling, 139

Bagpipe-players, the, 161, 168

Ballad-singers, street, 195

Ballast-getters, the, 269

Ballast-heavers, the, 272

---- wives, meeting of, 285

Ballast-lightermen, the, 271

Ballast-men, the, 265

Ballet performers, 144

Beetle-destroyers, 40

Billy Barlow, 138

Birds and mice, exhibitor of, 219

Black, Jack, statement of, 11

Black-beetles, natural history of, 39

Blind reader, the, 154

---- performer on the bells, 161

---- female violin-player, 161

---- Scotch violoncello-player, 162

---- Irish piper, 162

Boy inmates of the casual wards of the London workhouses, statements of, 388

Bug-destroyer, Her Majesty’s, 36

Bugs and fleas, natural history of, 34

Cabmen, character of, 351

---- crime amongst, 356

Cabs, introduction of, 350

---- regulations for, 354

Carmen and porters, 357

Carmen, the London, 361

Carrying trade, the, 361

Casual wards of London workhouses, statements of boy-inmates, 388

---- ---- ---- ----number of applicants, 392

Catch-’em-alive sellers, 28

Chalker on flag-stones, 214

Charities, and sums given to the poor, 429

Cheap lodging-houses, 312

---- ---- ---- inmates of, 313

Chinese shades, the, 74

Clown, street, the, 119

---- penny-gaff, the, 121

---- canvas, the, 126

Coal-backers, statements of, 243

Coal-heavers, the, statements of, 233

Coal-meters, the, 260

Coal-porters, the, statements of, 261

Concertina-player on the steamboats, 182

Conjuror, street, the, 107

---- ---- statement of another, 110

Crickets, natural history of, 41

Dancing-dogs, the, 181

Dock-labourers, the, 300

Doll’s-eye maker, the, 231

Dominion of fancy, or Punch’s opera, 53

Drum and pipes, performers on, 189

Drunkenness in different trades, table of, 245

Fantoccini man, the, 60

“Farm-yard” player, 161

Flies, natural history of, 24

Fly-paper maker, 31

French hurdy-gurdy players, and dancing-children, 171

Garret-masters, statements of, 221

Glee-singers, street, 194

Gun-exercise exhibitor, one-legged Italian, 155

Guy Fawkes man, 67

---- ---- boy, 70

Guy Fawkeses, 64

Hackney-coach and cabmen, 347

Happy family, the, exhibitor, 214

---- ---- original, 215

Harp-player, the poor, 174

Inland navigation, 326

Italian with monkey, 179

Italian pipers and clarionet-players, 177

Jester, penny circus, the, 131

Juggler, street, the, 104

Labourers, timber-dock, 292

---- casual, 300

---- dock, 300

Lightermen and bargemen, the, 332

London Dock, the, 301

London omnibus-drivers and conductors, 336

London vagrants, 368

London vagrants, asylums for the houseless, 406

London watermen, lightermen, and steamboat-men, 328

Lumpers, the, 288

Mechanical figures, exhibitor of 77

Mercantile marine, the 318

Microscope, exhibitor of the 83

Negro serenaders, street, statements of 190, 191

Old Sarah 159

Omnibuses, origin of 339

---- proprietors 342

---- drivers 344

---- conductors 345

---- timekeepers 346

Organ-man, the, with flute-harmonium organ 174

Peep-shows 88

Penny circus-jester 131

Penny mouse-trap maker, the 21

Penny profile-cutter, the 210

Photographic man, statement of a 206

Photography, street 204

Porters, the, classification of 364

---- tackle, the 365

---- ticket, the 365

---- packers, the 366

---- street, the 366

---- fellowship, the 367

Profile-cutter, penny, the 210

Profile-cutter, blind, the 213

Punch 43

---- talk 41

----’s refreshment 48

---- history of 48

----’s figures 50

----’s frame and proscenium 53

----’s opera described 53

Punchmen at the theatre 48

Punchmen, scene with two 47

Railways, the 321

---- traffic 323

---- persons employed 325

Rat-killer, the 1

---- Jemmy Shaw 9

---- Jack Black 11

---- the Sewerman 20

Rat-killing, night at 5

Rats, natural history of 3

Reciter, street, the 152

Refuge for the homeless, Playhouse Yard, Cripplegate 407, 417

---- ---- ---- ---- statements of inmates 407

---- ---- ---- ---- description of 428

Returned convict, statement of 428

Risley, street, the 94

St. Katherine’s Docks 311

Sewerman, the, a ratcatcher 20

Scotch piper and dancing girl 164

Shaw, Jemmy, statement of 9

Showman, street, an old 79

Silly Billy 134

Snake, sword, and knife swallower, the 117

Steam navigation 333

Stilt-vaulters 148

Street showman, an old 72

---- postman, the 90

---- Risley, the 94

---- juggler, the 104

---- conjuror, the 107

---- clown, the 119

---- reciter, the 151

---- negro serenaders, statements of 190

---- glee singers 194

---- ballad singers or chaunters 195

Street photography 204

Street bands, English 163

---- ---- German 164

Strolling actors 139

Strong man, the 98

Telescope, exhibitor of 79

Thames watermen, the 328

Ticket-of-leave men, meeting of 430

---- ---- statements of 431

Tight-rope dancers and stilt-vaulters 148

Timber-dock labourers 292

Timber and deal trade, the 295

Tom-tom players, statements of 185, 188

Turnpike-roads and stage-coaches 319

Vagrancy, causes of 368

Vagrants, the London 368

---- classification of 371

---- statements of 378

---- number and cost of 397

---- routes of the 398

Watermen, the 353

---- the Thames 328

West India Docks, the 310

Whistling man, the 197

---- and dancing boy, the 199

---- Billy 200

Writer without hands 213

Transcriber's Note

Transcribed from the 1967 reprinting of the 1865 edition.

Larger tables have been refactored to improve readability on smaller screens.

Images and tables have been moved to avoid breaking paragraphs.

On p. 102, a capital letter T is used to represent a printed symbol in the word "T-square."

The following apparent errors have been corrected:

p. 1 "he d" changed to "he’d"

p. 7 "rats" changed to "rats."

p. 12 "“In another" changed to "In another"

p. 12 "were pledged" changed to "“were pledged"

p. 14 "chowl:" changed to "chowl;"

p. 15 "‘Holy Face,”" changed to "‘Holy Face,’"

p. 17 "rat-ketcher," changed to "rat-ketcher,’"

p. 17 "sp ilt" changed to "spilt"

p. 18 "recommenda-" changed to "recommendation"

p. 21 "‘gully-hunters" changed to "‘gully-hunters’"

p. 24 "Europe," changed to "Europe."

p. 26 "wtth" changed to "with"

p. 28 "catch’-em-alive" changed to "catch-’em-alive"

p. 34 "night." changed to "night.’"

p. 35 "LINN" changed to "LINN."

p. 35 "vermin." changed to "vermin.”"

p. 36 "of full" changed to "full of"

p. 36 "“The fox,” say they, “gathers" changed to "The fox, say they, gathers"

p. 39 "iu" changed to "in"

p. 50 "like" changed to "like."

p. 51 "The mistress" changed to "“The mistress"

p. 52 "dead." changed to "dead.’"

p. 54 "dance;" changed to "dance;’"

p. 55 "con." changed to "con.)"

p. 55 "JIM CROW" changed to "JIM CROW."

p. 56 "cries--" changed to "cries)--"

p. 57 "That’s" changed to "(That’s"

p. 58 " music.)" changed to " music."

p. 59 "Clown" changed to "Clown."

p. 61 "that," changed to "that."

p. 61 "shiliings" changed to "shillings"

p. 63 "out of-the-way" changed to "out-of-the-way"

p. 64 "wtth" changed to "with"

p. 68 "This year" changed to "“This year"

p. 71 "‘This" changed to "“This"

p. 72 "Hurrah!" changed to "Hurrah!’"

p. 72 "shillings, a-week" changed to "shillings a-week,"

p. 75 "down." changed to "down.’"

p. 75 "you do." changed to "you do.’"

p. 75 "gin?" changed to "gin?’"

p. 76 "balanee" changed to "balance"

p. 79 "too.’" changed to "too."

p. 79 "informaation" changed to "information"

p. 80 "visit." changed to "visit.’"

p. 81 "sir?" changed to "sir?’"

p. 84 "When, he went into the country" changed to "When he went into the country,"

p. 91 "the the pole" changed to "the pole"

p. 94 "Posturing" changed to "“Posturing"

p. 95 "Last" changed to "“Last"

p. 96 "like:" changed to "like:’"

p. 98 "‘or, The" changed to "or, ‘The"

p. 98 "dresses.’" changed to "dresses.”"

p. 100 "before," changed to "before."

p. 106 "man!”" changed to "man!’"

p. 106 "then!”" changed to "then!’"

p. 111 "anybody." changed to "anybody.’"

p. 112 "from me." changed to "from me.’"

p. 113 "for." changed to "for.’"

p. 113 "handkercher," changed to "handkercher."

p. 118 "‘Tumblers!’”" changed to "‘Tumblers!’"

p. 121 "proprietor," changed to "proprietor."

p. 122 "Govent" changed to "Covent"

p. 123 "old up" changed to "up old"

p. 125 "Queen." changed to "Queen.’"

p. 127 "replies." changed to "replies,"

p. 127 "tooth-ache!" changed to "tooth-ache!’"

p. 131 "dinner?" changed to "dinner?’"

p. 133 "‘Now," changed to "‘Now,’"

p. 133 "150_l._" changed to "150_l._’"

p. 133 "150_l._’" changed to "150_l._"

p. 133 "Yes," changed to "‘Yes,"

p. 133 "from from" changed to "from"

p. 134 "cheeky.’" changed to "cheeky."

p. 140 "&c?" changed to "&c.?"

p. 149 "croooking" changed to "crooking"

p. 149 "still" changed to "stilt"

p. 157 "Draw" changed to "DRAW"

p. 157 "AR-R-RMS,’" changed to "AR-R-RMS,"

p. 161 "collar" changed to "collar."

p. 163 "since" changed to "since."

p. 164 "The Campbells" changed to "‘The Campbells"

p. 171 "aud" changed to "and"

p. 192 "bird;" changed to "bird;’"

p. 192 "was?’" changed to "was?"

p. 192 "Yes;" changed to "‘Yes;"

p. 192 "weeks." changed to "weeks.’"

p. 192 "The libery" changed to "‘The libery"

p. 192 "on;’" changed to "on;"

p. 192 "well." changed to "well.’"

p. 192 "Can" changed to "‘Can"

p. 192 "Insult" changed to "‘Insult"

p. 192 "Well" changed to "‘Well"

p. 194 "and so" changed to "“and so"

p. 196 "He is" changed to "“He is"

p. 205 "“Ah!" changed to "“Ah!”"

p. 206 "darkey,’" changed to "darkey,"

p. 207 "2_l._" changed to "2_l._,"

p. 208 "hair," changed to "hair,’"

p. 213 "sir.’" changed to "sir.”"

p. 213 "‘I was" changed to "“I was"

p. 218 "follow out" changed to "hollow out"

p. 229 "journeyman" changed to "journeymen"

p. 234 "Coalwhippers" changed to "Coalwhippers’"

p. 239 "purlman," changed to "purlman,’"

p. 246 "as well" changed to "as well as"

p. 247 "altgether" changed to "altogether"

p. 255 "teetaler" changed to "teetotaler"

p. 260 "been been" changed to "been"

p. 261 "If there" changed to "“If there"

p. 264 "of th" changed to "of the"

p. 264 "A portion" changed to "“A portion"

p. 265 "passing" changed to "pasing"

p. 269 "cross-currents," changed to "cross-currents."

p. 271 "a-yoar" changed to "a-year"

p. 271 "through it." changed to "through it.”"

p. 273 "“The constant" changed to "The constant"

p. 273 "use." changed to "use.”"

p. 276 "trnst" changed to "trust"

p. 276 "6 9 0" changed to "0 9 0"

(illustration) "Sketch." changed to "Sketch.]"

p. 279 "fellow-men." changed to "fellow-men.”"

p. 280 "she went" changed to "he went"

p. 281 "teototalers" changed to "teetotalers"

p. 281 "bedding." changed to "bedding,"

p. 282 "I’ve known" changed to "‘I’ve known"

p. 282 "Go to" changed to "‘Go to"

p. 282 "6_d_" changed to "6_d._"

p. 288 "“I,’" changed to "“I,”"

p. 303 "up up" changed to "up"

p. 307 "half-a quartern" changed to "half-a-quartern"

p. 309 "district." changed to "district.”"

p. 312 "2500" changed to "25,000"

p. 316 "1_s_" changed to "1_s._"

p. 317 "congregrated" changed to "congregated"

p. 319 "rivers," changed to "rivers."

p. 319 "turnpike roads" changed to "turnpike-roads"

p. 323 "Passsengers" changed to "Passengers"

p. 326 "Difficulties" changed to "“Difficulties"

p. 326 "106 to to" changed to "106 to"

p. 328 "49,000" changed to "40,000"

p. 330 "time." changed to "time.’"

p. 330 "us.’”" changed to "us.”"

p. 334 "1825" changed to "1835"

p. 335 "Battersea;" changed to "Battersea,"

p. 337 "Coldbath-fields," changed to "Coldbath-fields"

p. 341 "1800;" changed to "1800);"

p. 341 "&c" changed to "&c."

p. 342 "Tricyles" changed to "Tricycles"

p. 347 "Im’" changed to "I’m"

p. 347 "how described" changed to "now described"

p. 355 "two." changed to "two.’"

p. 358 "rare" changed to "rare."

p. 359 "5_s_" changed to "5_s._"

p. 361 "17,000" changed to "1,700"

p. 363 "1-1/2_d_" changed to "1-1/2_d._"

p. 364 "dispute" changed to "dispute."

p. 366 "mentioned." changed to "mentioned.”"

p. 369 "as developed" changed to "“as developed"

p. 370 "companiions" changed to "companions"

p. 374 "come" changed to "some"

p. 376 "Narrill" changed to "Harril"

p. 377 "Mr. J." changed to "“Mr. J."

p. 377 "“I believe" changed to "‘I believe"

p. 377 "thieves.”" changed to "thieves.’"

p. 377 "An officer" changed to "“An officer"

p. 377 "“Does" changed to "‘Does"

p. 377 "thieving?” “Yes" changed to "thieving?’ ‘Yes"

p. 377 "thieves.” “Then" changed to "thieves.’ ‘Then"

p. 377 "depredation?” “I am sure of it.”" changed to "depredation?’ ‘I am sure of it.’”"

p. 381 "sure" changed to "sure I"

p. 382 "clothes" changed to "clothes;"

p. 396 "‘ The" changed to " ‘The"

p. 396 "morning," changed to "morning."

p. 396 "nightly.”" changed to "nightly."

p. 397 "and 76,400" changed to "76,400"

p. 402 "to me," changed to "to me."

p. 407 "night’s" changed to "nights’"

p. 411 "a-day.:" changed to "a-day:"

p. 418 "Mining" changed to "Mining."

p. 429 "wordly" changed to "worldly"

p. 430 "tickets-of leave" changed to "tickets-of-leave"

p. 430 "meeting.”" changed to "meeting."

p. 436 "cirstances" changed to "circumstances"

p. 442 "305" changed to "365"

Inconsistent or archaic spelling, capitalisation and punctuation have otherwise been kept as printed.

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