A little of what Mayhew had to say;
Every Londoner must have seen numbers of
ragged, sickly, and ill-fed children, squatting
at the entrances of miserable courts, streets,
and alleys, engaged in no occupation that is
either creditable to themselves or useful to the
community. These are, in many cases, those
whose sole homes are in the low lodging-
houses; and I will now exhibit a few features
of the `juvenile performers' among the ` Lon-
don Poor.'
"In many cases these poor children have lost
one of their parents; in some, they are without
either father or mother; but even when both
parents are alive, the case is little mended, for
if the parents be of the vagrant or dishonest
class, their children are often neglected, and
left to provide for the cost of their food and
lodging as they best may. The following ex-
tract from the chaplain's report of one of our
provincial jails, gives a melancholy insight into
the training of many of the families. It is not,
I know, without exception; but, much as we
could wish it to be otherwise, it is so general
an occurrence, varied into its different forms,
that it may be safely accounted as the rule of
action.
" `J. G. was born of poor parents. At five
years old his father succeeded to a legacy of
500l. He was quiet, indolent, fond of drink, a
good scholar, and had twelve children. He
never sent any of them to school! "Telling
lies," said the child, "I learned from my
mother; she did things unknown to father,
and gave me a penny not to tell him!" The
father (on leaving home) left, by request of the
mother, some money to pay a man; she slipped
up stairs, and told the children to say she was
out.
" `From ten to twelve years of age I used to go
to the ale-house. I stole the money from my
father, and got very drunk. My father never
punished me for all this, as he ought to have
done. In course of time I was apprenticed to a
tanner; he ordered me to chapel, instead of
which I used to play in the fields. When out
of my time I got married, and still carried on the
same way, starving my wife and children. I used
to take my little boy, when only five years old, to
the public-house, and make him drunk with
whatever I drank myself. A younger one
could act well a drunken man on the floor. My
wife was a sober steady women; but, through
coming to fetch me home she learned to drink
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Column 1
too. One of our children used to say, "Mam,
you are drunk, like daddy." '
"It may be argued that this awful `family
portrait' is not the average character, but I have
witnessed too many similar scenes to doubt the
general application of the sad rule.
"Of those children of the poor, as has been
before observed, the most have either no parents,
or have been deserted by them, and have no
regular means of living, nor moral superintend-
ance on the part of relatives or neighbours;
consequently, they grow up in habits of idle-
ness, ignorance, vagrancy, or crime. In some
cases they are countenanced and employed.
Here and there may be seen a little urchin
holding a few onions in a saucer, or a diminutive
sickly girl standing with a few laces or a box or
two of lucifers. But even these go with the per-
sons who have `set them up' daily to the public-
house (and to the lodging-house at night); and
after they have satisfied the cravings of hunger,
frequently expend their remaining halfpence (if
any) in gingerbread, and as frequently in gin. I
have overheard a proposal for `half-a-quartern
and a two-out' (glass) between a couple of shoe-
less boys under nine years old. One little fellow
of eleven, on being remonstrated with, said that
it was the only pleasure in life that he had, and
he weren't a-going to give that up. Both sexes
of this juvenile class frequent, when they can
raise the means, the very cheap and `flash'
places of amusement, where the precocious de-
linquent acquires the most abandoned tastes, and
are often allured by elder accomplices to commit
petty frauds and thefts.
"Efforts have been made to redeem these
young recruits in crime from their sad career,
with its inevitable results. In some cases, I
rejoice to believe that success has crowned the
endeavour. There is that, however, in the cun-
ning hardihood of the majority of these immature
delinquents, which presents almost insuperable
barriers to benevolence, and of this I will adduce
an instance.
Much more
here
OOOH 2000th post!