Note 35 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY

The milkmaids’ chief haunt was Islington, whence hundreds of them carried the milk into London every morning. In his print “Evening,” the scene of which is laid outside the “Middleton Head,” Hogarth has an Islington milkmaid milking a cow, and in his “Enraged Musicians,” a milkmaid with her cry of Milk Belouw contributes to the town noises. The “garlands of massive plate” which the milkmaids carried round on May Day were borrowed of pawnbrokers on security. One pawnbroker, says Hone, was particularly resorted to. He let his plate at so much per hour, under bond from housekeepers for its safe return. In this way one set of milkmaids would hire the garland from ten o’clock till one, and another from one till six, and so on during the first three days of May. These customs had all but passed away when Smith wrote his Rainy Day, but long after the milkmaids had ceased to celebrate the London May Day the chimney-sweepers brought out their Jacks-in-the-green, specimens of which have been seen in the streets in the last twenty years. In 1825, Hone speaks of the dances round the “garland” as a “lately disused custom.”