Chapter IX · (continued 2)

"'Bone,' meaning good.

"'Cooper'd,' spoiled by the imprudence of some other patterer.

"'Gammy,' likely to have you taken up.

"'Flummut,' sure of a month in quod.

"In most lodging-houses there is an old man who is the guide to every 'walk' in the vicinity, and who can tell every house on every round that is 'good for a cold 'tater.' In many cases there is over the kitchen mantel-piece a map of the district, dotted here and there with memorandums of failure or success.

"Patterers are fond of carving their names and avocations about the houses they visit. The old jail at Dartford has been some years a 'padding-ken.' In one of the rooms appear the following autographs:—

"'Jemmy, the Rake, bound to Bristol; bad beds, but no bugs. Thank God for all things.'

"'Razor George and his moll slept here the day after Christmas; just out of "stir," (jail,) for "muzzling a peeler."'

"'Scotch Mary, with "driz," (lace,) bound to Dover and back, please God.'

"Sometimes these inscriptions are coarse and obscene; sometimes very well written and orderly. Nor do they want illustrations.

"At the old factory, Lincoln, is a portrait of the town beadle, formerly a soldier; it is drawn with different-coloured chalks, and ends with the following couplet:—

"Concubinage is very common among patterers, especially on their travels; they have their regular rounds, and call the peregrination 'going on circuit.' For the most part they are early risers; this gives them a facility for meeting poor girls who have had a night's shelter in the union workhouses. They offer such girls some refreshments, swear they are single men, and promise comforts certainly superior to the immediate position of their victims. Consent is generally obtained; perhaps a girl of fourteen or fifteen, previously virtuous, is induced to believe in a promise of constant protection, but finds herself, the next morning, ruined and deserted; nor is it unlikely that, within a month or two, she will see her seducer in the company of a dozen incidental wives. A gray-headed miscreant, called 'Cutler Tom,' boasts of five hundred such exploits; and there is too great reason to believe that the picture of his own drawing is not greatly overcharged."

A reverend gentleman, who had enjoyed the best opportunities for observing the patterers, gave Mr. Mayhew the following information:—

"I have seen fathers and mothers place their boys and girls in positions of incipient enormity, and command them to use language and gestures to each other which would make a harlot blush, and almost a heathen tremble. I have hitherto viewed the patterer as a salesman, having something in his hand, on whose merits, real or pretended, he talks people out of their money. By slow degrees prosperity rises, but rapid is the advance of evil. The patterer sometimes gets 'out of stock,' and is obliged, at no great sacrifice of conscience, to 'patter' in another strain. In every large town, sham official documents, with crests, seals, and signatures, can be got for half-a-crown. Armed with these, the patterer becomes a 'lurker,' that is, an impostor; his papers certify any and every 'ill that flesh is heir to.' Shipwreck is called a 'shake lurk;' loss by fire is a 'glim.' Sometimes the petitioner has had a horse which has dropped dead with the mad staggers; or has a wife ill or dying, and six or seven children at once sickening of the small-pox. Children are borrowed to support the appearance; the case is certified by the minister and churchwardens of a parish which exists only in imagination; and as many people dislike the trouble of investigation, the patterer gets enough to raise a stock in trade, and divides the spoil between the swag-shop and the gin-palace. Sometimes they are detected, and get a 'drag,' (three months in prison.)

"They have many narrow escapes; one occurs to me of a somewhat ludicrous character:—A patterer and lurker (now dead) known by the name of 'Captain Moody,' unable to get a 'fakement' written or printed, was standing almost naked in the streets of a neighbouring town. A gentleman stood still and heard his piteous tale, but, having been 'done' more than once, he resolved to examine the affair, and begged the petitioner to conduct him to his wife and children, who were in a garret on a bed of languishing, with neither clothes, food, nor fire, but, it appeared, with faith enough to expect a supply from 'Him who feedeth the ravens,' and in whose sacred name even a cold 'tater was implored. The patterer, or half-patterer and half-beggar, took the gentleman (who promised a sovereign if every thing was square) through innumerable and intricate windings, till he came to an outhouse or sort of stable. He saw the key outside the door, and begged the gentleman to enter and wait till he borrowed a light of a neighbour to show him up-stairs. The illumination never arrived, and the poor charitable man found that the miscreant had locked him into the stable. The patterer went to the padding-ken, told the story with great glee, and left that locality within an hour of the occurrence."

Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and other provincial cities possess an ignorant and immoral population quite equal, in proportion to the entire population of each city, to that of London. In each may be found a degraded class, with scarcely any ideas of religion or morality, living in the most wretched manner, and practising every species of vice. The cellar-houses, in which many of them live, have been described in another chapter. They are the filthy abodes of a people almost reduced to a brutish condition. In Liverpool parish there is a cellar-population of 20,000, a large number of whom are continually engaged in criminal practices. There are portions of the city of Glasgow which a stranger could scarcely traverse safely at night, and where an amount of vice and misery may be witnessed which is not exceeded in either London or Liverpool.

In the mining and manufacturing districts of England there is much ignorance and more vice. In both, there are schools of a miserable character, but those young persons who can find time to attend them learn nothing beyond reading, writing, and the simplest rules of arithmetic. The mining labour, as carried on in the mines of England, is extremely demoralizing in its tendency, as we have shown in another part of this work. The report of parliamentary commissioners contains some statements in regard to the darkness of mind and corruption of heart among young persons employed in the various trades and manufactures.

The following facts are quoted from the Second Report of the "Children's Employment Commission."

The moral and religious state of the children and young persons employed in the trades and manufactures of Birmingham, is described by the sub-commissioners as very unfavourable. The social and domestic duties and affections are but little cultivated and practised; great numbers never attend any place of public worship; and of the state of juvenile crime some conception may be formed by the statement, that of the total number of known or suspected offenders in this town, during the twelve last months—namely, 1223—at least one-half were under fifteen years of age.

As to illicit sexual intercourse, it seems to prevail almost universally, and from a very early period of life; to this common conclusion witnesses of every rank give testimony.

Wolverhampton.—Of the moral condition of the youthful population in the Wolverhampton district, Mr. Horne says—"Putting together all I elicited from various witnesses and conversations with working people, abroad and at home, and all that fell under my observation, I am obliged to come to the conclusion, that the moral virtues of the great majority of the children are as few in number and as feeble in practice as can well be conceived in a civilized country, surrounded by religious and educational institutions, and by individuals anxious for the improvement of the condition of the working classes."

He adds of Wittenhall—"A lower condition of morals, in the fullest sense of the term, could not, I think, be found. I do not mean by this that there are many more prominent vices among them, but that moral feelings and sentiments do not exist among them. They have no morals."

Sheffield.—In all the Sheffield trades, employing large numbers of children, it is stated that there is a much closer intermixture of the younger children with the elder youths, and with the men, than is usual in the cotton, woollen, and flax factories; and that the conversation to which the children are compelled to listen, would debase their minds and blunt their moral feelings even if they had been carefully and virtuously educated, but that of course this result takes place more rapidly and completely in the case of those who have had little or no religious culture, and little but bad example before their eyes from their cradle upward.

Habits of drinking are formed at a very early age, malt liquor being generally introduced into the workshops, of which the youngest children are encouraged to partake. "Very many," say the police-officers, "frequent beer-shops, where they play at dominoes, bagatelle, &c. for money or drink." Early intemperance is assigned by the medical men as one cause of the great mortality of Sheffield. "There are beer-houses," says the Rev. Mr. Farish, "attended by youths exclusively, for the men will not have them in the same houses with themselves. In these beer-houses are youths of both sexes encouraged to meet, and scenes destructive of every vestige of virtue or morality ensue.

But it is stated by all classes of witnesses, that "the most revolting feature of juvenile depravity in this town is early contamination from the association of the sexes," that "juvenile prostitution is exceedingly common." "The evidence," says the sub-commissioner, "might have been doubled which attests the early commencement of sexual and promiscuous intercourse among boys and girls."

Sedgley.—At Sedgley and the neighbouring villages, the number of girls employed in nail-making considerably exceeds that of the boys. Of these girls Mr. Horne reports—"Their appearance, manners, habits, and moral natures (so far as the word moral can be applied to them) are in accordance with their half-civilized condition. Constantly associating with ignorant and depraved adults and young persons of the opposite sex, they naturally fall into all their ways; and drink, smoke, swear, throw off all restraint in word and act, and become as bad as a man. The heat of the forge and the hardness of the work renders few clothes needful in winter; and in summer, the six or seven individuals who are crowded into these little dens find the heat almost suffocating. The men and boys are usually naked, except a pair of trousers and an open shirt, though they very often have no shirt; and the women and girls have only a thin ragged petticoat, and an open shirt without sleeves."

In the mining districts, there is even more ignorance and depravity than in the places where factories and workshops abound. The nature of the work, and various wants, such as no freemen would suffer from—want of proper schools and proper amusements—induce this state of things. An American visiting any of these mining districts, would be astounded at the dulness, ignorance, and viciousness that prevails among the labourers—men and women, boys and girls. Many of them are perfect heathens—never hearing of God except when his awful name is "taken in vain." Of Christ and his mission they hear somewhat, but know nothing positively. Newspapers—those daily and weekly messengers that keep Americans fully informed of the affairs of the world—they seldom see. The gin-shop and the brothel are their common resorts.

Missionaries are wanted in Great Britain. Alas! that in the middle of the nineteenth century, there should be so many hundreds of thousands of people, in the vicinity of a costly church establishment, without any knowledge of the Bible!—that a professedly Christian government should keep so many souls in ignorance of Christianity!—that a country boasting of its civilization and enlightenment should contain so much darkness and depravity!