Note 53 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY
Reading edition
This song, entitled “Just the Thing,” is valuable as a portrait of the eighteenth-century “hooligan,” ancestor of Mr. Clarence Rook’s nineteenth century “Alf” in Hooligan Nights:—
“On Newgate steps Jack Chance was found, And bred up near St. Giles’s Pound, My story is true, deny it who can, By saucy, leering Billingsgate Nan. Her bosom glowed with heartfelt joy When first she held the lovely boy. Then home the prize she straight did bring, And they all allow’d he was just the thing. At twelve years old, I have been told, The youth was sturdy, stout, and bold; He learn’d to curse, to swear, and fight, And everything but read and write. But when he came to man’s estate, His mind it ran on something great, A-thieving then he scorn’d to tramp; So hir’d a pad and went on the scamp. At clubs he all Flash Soup did sing. And they all allow’d he was just the thing. His manual exercise gone through, Of Bridewell, Pump, and Horse Pond too, His back had often felt the smart Of Tyburn strings at the tail of a cart. He stood the patter, but that’s no matter, He gammon’d the Twelve, and work’d on the water, Then a pardon he got from his gracious King, And swaggering Jack was just the thing. Like a captain bold, well arm’d for war. With bludgeon stout, or iron bar, At heading a mob, he never did fail, At burning a mass-house, or gutting a jail; But a victim he fell to his country’s laws, And died at last in religion’s cause. No Popery! made the blade to swing, And when tuck’d up he was just the thing.”