Dickens's England (11 page)

Wiv me and 'er – 'er and me.

For she's a lady – yuss, and I'm a gentleman,

We're boaf looked up to, and deserves to be;

For she's a lady – yuss, and I'm a toff –

Me and 'er – 'er and me.

‘Cos we keeps straight, we 'as to put up wiv some sneers and slurs,

Me and 'er – 'er and me;

Our 'oneymoon ain't over yet, though we've been married years,

Me and 'er – 'er and me.

We don't purfess to be no better than the rest o' folks,

But the wife's a bit pertickler, don't yer see,

So we goes to church on Sunday, like the village blacksmith did,

Me and 'er – 'er and me.

For she's a lady – yuss, and I'm a gentleman,

We're boaf looked up to, and deserves to be;

For she's a lady – yuss, and I'm 'er bloke –

Me and 'er – 'er and me.

music-hall song, late Victorian

THE SAME, ALL THROUGH

I visited several families of the distressed operatives in Bolton, accompanied by a gentleman well acquainted with the locality. The invariable account given in every place was ‘no work', and, as a consequence, ‘no food, no furniture and no clothing'. We entered one house tenanted by a young couple whom I at first mistook for brother and sister; they were a husband and wife, about six years married, but fortunately without children. On a table of the coarsest wood, but perfectly clean, stood what we were assured was the only meal they had tasted for twenty-four hours, and the only one they had any reasonable prospect of tasting for twenty-four hours to come. It consisted of two small plates of meal porridge, a thin oaten cake, some tea so diluted that it had scarcely a tinge of colour, and a small portion of the coarsest sugar in the fragment of a broken bowl.

The husband had been a cotton spinner, but the factory to which he belonged had been closed for several weeks; the wife had also been employed in the same establishment. When in good work the united earnings of both average about 30
s
weekly; but for several (I think they said thirteen) weeks they had not been able to earn so many pence. Their furniture had been sold piecemeal to supply pressing necessities, their clothes had been pawned, they had hoped for better times; but they felt their condition was ‘worsening'. The man would have gone to a foreign land, but he could not leave his wife alone to die, and her constitution would not bear the rough travelling which falls to the lot of light pockets.

My friend asked whether, under the circumstances, he did not lament his early imprudent marriage. He paused, looked fondly at his wife, who reciprocated his gaze with a melancholy smile of enduring affection; tears gathered in his manly eye, and his lip quivered with strong emotion; he dashed the tear aside, mastered his emotions with one convulsive effort, which, however, shook his entire frame, and with calm firmness replied, ‘Never! We have been happy and we have suffered together; she has been the same to me all through.'

W. Cooke Taylor,
Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of

Lancashire
(1842)

HOW TO GET A DIVORCE

Mr Justice Maule, to a hawker convicted of bigamy (before the Matrimonial Causes Act, 1858):

‘I will tell you what you ought to have done under the circumstances, and if you say you did not know, I must tell you that the law conclusively presumes that you did. You should have instructed your attorney to bring an action against the seducer of your wife for damages; that would have cost you about £100. Having proceeded thus far, you should have employed a proctor and instituted a suit in the Ecclesiastical Courts for a divorce
a mensa et thoro;
that would have cost you £200 or £300 more. When you had obtained a divorce
a mensa et thoro,
you had only to obtain a private Act for a divorce
a vinculo matrimonii.
The Bill might possibly have been opposed in all its stages in both Houses of Parliament, and altogether these proceedings would cost you £1,000. You will probably tell me that you never had a tenth of that sum, but that makes no difference. Sitting here as an English judge, it is my duty to tell you that this is not a country in which there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. You will be imprisoned for one day.'

T.A.Nash,
The Life of Richard, Lord Westbury
(1888), in Ronald Pearsall,
The Worm in the Bud
(1969)

FARE WELL

[Working class funerals]

The expenditure on funerals – cabs, mourning, etc. – is usually greater after an accident, as it appeals to the public imagination more. Even when a man has been insured, and there should therefore be a small sum to tide over the first moment of great need, it often happens that nearly all the insurance money goes in the funeral. ‘I put him away splendid', you will hear a widow say, forgetting, or at any rate accepting, the fact that her house is nearly bare of necessaries, and that in a day or two she may not know where to turn for bread. Another said with pride after her husband died that she had ‘buried him with ham', meaning that the assembled company who came to the funeral had had sandwiches of the best description.

A funeral, indeed, is one of the principal social opportunities in the class we are describing. ‘A slow walk and a cup of tea' it is sometimes called, and the busy preparations in the house for a day or two before, the baking, the cleaning, the turning-out, are often undoubtedly tinged with the excitement and anticipation of the entertainer. And after all we must not forget that to many women, at any rate, giving a party, having a great many people in the house at once, is in itself a stimulus and a pleasure, and that for those of the community who are debarred by their conditions as well as their habitations from giving an ‘at-home' or a dance, the justifiable crowding of the funeral means absolutely the only opportunity for keeping open house, and is accordingly seized.

Lady Florence Bell,
At the Works. A Study of a Manufacturing Town
(1907)

GONE BEFORE, BUT NOT LOST

I lately read a moving instance of conjugal affection in the newspaper. The Marquis of Hastings died in Malta; shortly before his death he ordered that his right hand should be cut off immediately after his death, and sent to his wife. A gentleman of my acquaintance, out of real tenderness, and with her previously obtained permission, cut off his mother's head, that he might keep the skull as long as he lived. . . . I am told that there is a country house in England where a corpse, fully dressed, has been standing at a window for the last half-century, and still overlooks its former property.

Prince von Pückler-Muskau (trans. S. Austin),
Tour by a German Prince
(1832)

CLASS CLOTHING

The clothing of the working people, in the majority of cases, is in a very bad condition. The material used is not of the best adapted. Wool and linen have almost vanished from the wardrobe of both sexes, and cotton has taken their place. Shirts are made of bleached or coloured cotton goods; the dresses of the women are chiefly of cotton print goods, and woollen petticoats are rarely to be seen on the washline. The men wear chiefly trousers of fustian or other heavy cotton goods, and jackets or coats of the same. Fustian has become the proverbial costume of the working men, who are called ‘fustian jackets', and call themselves so in contrast to the gentlemen who wear broadcloth, which latter words are used as characteristic for the working class. . . . Hats are the universal head-covering in England, even for working men, hats of the most diverse forms, round, high, broad-rimmed, narrow-brimmed or without brims – only the younger men in factory towns wearing caps. Anyone who does not own a hat folds himself a low, square paper cap.

The whole clothing of the working class, even assuming it to be in good condition, is little adapted to the climate. The damp air of England, with its sudden changes of temperature, more calculated than any other to give rise to colds, obliges almost the whole middle class to wear flannel next the skin, about the body, and flannel scarves and shirts are in almost universal use. Not only is the working class deprived of this precaution, it is scarcely ever in a position to use a thread of woollen clothing; and the heavy cotton goods, though thicker, stiffer and heavier than woollen clothes, afford much less protection against cold and wet . . . Moreover, the working man's clothing is, in most cases, in bad condition, and there is the oft-recurring necessity for placing the best pieces in the pawnbroker's shop. . . . The Irish have introduced, too, the custom previously unknown in England, of going barefoot. In every manufacturing town there is now to be seen a multitude of people, especially women and children, going about barefoot, and their example is gradually being adopted by the poorer English.

Friedrich Engels,
The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844
(1845; trans. F.K. Wischnewetzky, 1885)

GLAD RAGS

[A Whitechapel Tailor's Advertisement]

The Champion of England
SLAP-UP-TOP
and Out and Out
KICKSIE'S
[trousers]
BUILDER
Mr H nabs the Chance of putting his customers awake that he has been able to put his mawleys on some of the right sort of stuff. One of the top manufacturers of Manchester has cut his lucky [absconded] leaving behind him a valuable stock of Moleskins etc. Mr H having some ready in his kick [pocket], slipped home with the swag, and is now safe in his crib. He can turn out Toggery very slap, at the following low Prices for

READY GILT – TICK BEING NO GO.

Upper Benjamins [tight long coat], built on a downy [cunning] plan, a monarch [sovereign] to half-finnuf [half of £5, i.e. £2.10
s
]. Fishing, Shooting or Business Togs, cut slap one pound, one quarter [5
s
] and one peg [1
s
]. Lounging Togs at any price you like. A Fancy sleeve blue Plush or Pilot [jacket], ditto [matching trousers] made very saucy, a couter [guinea]. Pair of Kerseymere or Doeskin Kicksies, cut to drop down over the trotters, 2 bulls [10
s
]; Bedford Cords cut very slap with the artful dodge, a canary [sovereign]. Pair of Out and Out Cords, built very serious, from six bob and a kick [6
s
6
d
] upwards. Pair of Moleskins, any colour, built hanky spanky, with a double fakement down the sides, and artful buttons on the bottom, half a monarch.

MUD PIES
[shoes],
KNEE CAPS AND

TROTTER CASES
[boots]
BUILT VERY LOW

A decent allowance made to Seedy Swells, Tea Kettle Purgers, Quill Drivers, Counter Jumpers, Head Robbers, and Flunkeys out of Collar.

Henry Mayhew,
London Labour and the London Poor
(2 vols 1851–2; 4 vols 1861–2)

A SOLDIERS' WOMAN

‘When I was sixteen,' she said, ‘I went wrong. I'm up'ards of thirty now. I've been fourteen or fifteen years at it. It's one of those things you can't well leave off when you've once took to it. I was born in Chatham. We had a small baker's shop there, and I served the customers and minded the shop. There's lots of soldiers at Chatham, as you know, and they used to look in at the window in passing, and nod and laugh whenever they could catch my eye. I liked to be noticed by the soldiers. At last one young fellow, a recruit, who had not long joined I think, for he told me he hadn't been long at the depot, came in and talked to me. Well, this went on, and things fell out as they always do with girls who go about with men, more especially soldiers, and when the regiment went to Ireland, he gave me a little money that helped me to follow it; and I went about from place to place, time after time, always sticking to the same regiment. My first man got tired of me in a year or two, but that didn't matter. I took up with a sergeant then, which was a cut above a private, and helped me on wonderful. When we were at Dover, there was a militia permanently embodied artillery regiment quartered with us on the western heights, and I got talking to some of the officers, who liked me a bit. I was a — sight prettier then than I am now, you may take your dying oath, and they noticed me uncommon; and though I didn't altogether cut my old friends, I carried on with these fellows all the time we were there, and made a lot of money, and bought better dresses and some jewellery, that altered me wonderful. One officer offered to keep me if I liked to come and live with him. He said he would take a house for me in the town, and keep a pony carriage if I would consent; but although I saw it would make me rise in the world, I refused. I was fond of my old associates, and did not like the society of gentlemen; so, when the regiment left Dover, I went with them, and I remained with them till I was five and twenty. We were then stationed in London, and I one day saw a private in the Blues [Royal Horse Guards] with one of my friends, and for the first time in my life I fell in love. He spoke to me, and I immediately accepted his proposals, left my old friends, and went to live in a new locality, among strangers; and I've been amongst the Blues ever since, going from one to the other never keeping to one long, and not particler as long as I get the needful. I don't get much – very little, hardly enough to live upon. I've done a little needlework in the daytime. I don't now, although I do some washing and mangling now and then to help it out. I don't pay much for my bedroom, only six bob [6
s
] a week, and dear at that. It ain't much of a place. Some of the girls about here live in houses. I don't; I never could abear it. You ain't your own master, and I always liked my freedom. I'm not comfortable exactly; it's a brutal sort of life, this. It isn't the sin of it, though, that worries me. I don't dare think of that much, but I do think of how happy I might have been if I'd always lived at Chatham, and married as other women do, and had a nice home and children; that's what I want, and when I think of that, I do cut up. It's enough to drive a woman wild to think that she's given up all chance of it; I feel I'm not respected either. If I have a row with any fellow, he's always the first to taunt me with being what he and his friends have made me. I don't feel it so much now. I used to at first. One dovetails into all that sort of thing in time, and the edge of your feelings, as I may say, wears off by degrees. That's what it is. And then the drink is very pleasant to us, and keeps up our spirits, without being able to talk and blackguard and give every fellow she meets as good as he brings.'