The Streets Page 3

  ‘My dear boy, we are not “trespassing” at all – we are conducting a professional investigation, and so long as they know you’re not working for the church – or the police – they will yarn away for as long as you please.’

  We had come to a halt, and with a swift glance around he announced that we should start here. I refer now to my notebook of this time, to the entries I wrote on that first day. It is a fair example of the particulars upon which The Labouring Classes of London was founded.

  Somers Town, 20 February 1882

  No. 26 Hampden Street. On the ground floor a family of Irish costers. One large room, two beds. Husband in good health, but the wife disposed to drink. Two girls & a boy, all ‘out working’, according to their mother.

  On the floor above a Mrs Morley, a respectable Roman Catholic lady, widowed with a daughter who gains a living in the City for both. She offered us tea, but seemed to possess so little in the way of cups, saucers, &c that we declined. The room poorly furnished but clean.

  On the second floor, a married couple, both of about fifty, & very much the worse for drink. The husband is a market porter, presently unemployed; the wife given to begging & picking up odds & ends in the street. Placid when we met them, but notorious in the district for their brawling (Mrs Morley below made indignant complaint of them).

  Two rooms on the third floor occupied by two or more coster families. Difficult to know anything about these people, who asked us for money & were disagreeable when refused. A man might be husband, brother, or lodger; to whom the children belonged it is impossible to judge. Mr Marchmont says there would be many such cases in the street.

  Nos 24 and 22. No answer at the door.

  No. 20. Empty; to be demolished.

  No. 18. In one of the parlours live the Trent family. Father, mother, son of seventeen, daughters of fourteen & twelve. Have lived in this room for several years. Mr Trent is a former tailor who now does repair work on clothes – ‘not a profitable line’ he says. His wife goes out nursing. They make between them twenty shillings a week, with help from the son (a coster). Daughters attend the Ragged School. They are another ‘good’ family on the brink of poverty, their struggle against it piteous.

  On the first floor, a street seller of ‘small articles’ lives with a woman of doubtful character – possibly a prostitute. Room entirely unfurnished save for a narrow truckle bed & an upturned crate which did service as a table on which to eat. Damp on the walls & ceiling unnoticed (or else ignored) by its occupants.

  The upper floors of the house are occupied by Irish families too shifting & multitudinous to document. ‘Bedlam,’ says Mr M. after five minutes’ converse with the landlord.

  No. 16. Empty, though vagrants are said to bed down here.

  No. 14 has three floors. The parlours & first floor are occupied by a shifting tenancy, mostly of a low class of costers whose wives sell watercress or flowers in the street. On the second floor live Mr & Mrs Snowdon, with five children. He works as a house painter but brings home little money; his drinking habits are unlikely to enable any long-term employment. The mother cares for the children, but is hard-pressed to keep them from starvation. Beer & a little bread the only victuals to be seen. The room they inhabit is filthy, & a home to vermin; walls leprous with damp, floor strewn with rubbish. The stench indescribable. Above the fireplace (unlit), a miserable-looking sampler, with this stitched motto: GOD BLESS OUR HOME.

  On the third floor, in one room, a family of six, with two beds between them. The panels of the door broken, either from negligence or a drunken mishap – not an uncommon sight. The husband, a lamplighter, suffers from asthma; the wife, quiet & steady, but forlorn in appearance; sells cress. Two children present were without shoes or stockings; whereabouts of the older two unknown.

  No. 12. Empty.

  No. 10. This house was, Mr M. believed, entirely abandoned, & the parlours & first & second floors showed severe dilapidation; even the grates had been stolen from the fireplaces. On the third floor back room, however, we found a Mr Duke, a former surgeon & of a very different class from the paupers & drunkards along the street. He was fifty-five, well-spoken, his attire worn but neat, & he recounted his misfortunes without bitterness. His wife & child had died in a railway accident up north ten years ago or more; unable to bear his grief he took to drink, lost his job & savings, & moved to Somers Town because it ‘seemed as convenient as anywhere else’ – & he could afford it. He has since stopped drinking, though he will never be able to regain his former station in life. Earns a little money in the neighbourhood as ‘a quack’. A chair, a table & a mattress are the sole furnishings in the room.

  Of all the interviews we conducted today this man’s story touched my heart the most, & greatly alarmed me. For if someone of his education & class can fall through the net into poverty’s chasm, then who is to say that it could not happen to oneself?

  Such were the day’s findings: an inauspicious beginning, you might think. Yet the standard of poverty and degradation I afterwards encountered in Somers Town was seldom less terrible than this, and in certain cases very much worse. But I will not burden you with too detailed a record of my investigations. I could not bear to write it down again, and in all likelihood you could not bear to read it.

  Later that afternoon, Marchmont suggested we had something to eat, which I took to mean stopping at a dining room or chop house. Instead, he walked over to a street pieman with his stall of pastries and puddings (‘Here’s all ’ot!’) and asked me what I should like: I chose a meat pie, and he the fish. As we stood there eating on the street, the local people passed us on either side, and every so often one of them would nod to Marchmont, or salute him as Guvnor. Again, he seemed absolutely at ease – he enjoyed ‘knocking about’ with them, and would even talk to the costers in their own slang. Meanwhile I had become curious about the filling in my pie.

  ‘It’s been rather highly seasoned,’ I said, swallowing down another fiery mouthful.

  Marchmont nodded. ‘They put a lot of pepper in it so as to conceal the flavour of the meat. I’m afraid they’re not very particular about what goes in.’

  He had consumed his own pie (‘eel, I think’) in the way he did everything else – with great alacrity – and was now wiping his fingers on a kerchief.

  ‘Well then,’ he said, looking about him, ‘I dare say you’re in blunt after that bargain I got for your coat.’

  ‘I’ve a few extra shillings,’ I said cautiously.

  ‘Perhaps you would care to chance it in a game? You could make good your losses from last week.’

  He had recalled my story of the ‘three-up’. I was reluctant to risk my money, but he was already striding off down a narrow lane. After turning this way and that we saw ahead a little court in front of the Brill Tavern, sequestered from the main thoroughfares on either side. A young lad, evidently keeping tout, was ready to whistle a warning, but then he seemed to recognise Marchmont and let us through. A gang of about fifteen young costers stood in a lively huddle, smoking, joshing one another and betting on the next toss. The ground before them was spangled with coppers, shillings and half-crowns: we had arrived in time for a big pot. Bets were being made and taken as rapidly as they could be spoken, and excitement thrummed amongst the little gathering. The street argot was the same I had queried the previous Friday at Montagu Square – I’ll try you a gen . . . flash it . . . say a rouf-yenep . . . say a couter . . . Cool him . . . I’m doin’ dab . . . say net-yenep . . . say a gen – but the talk went back and forth at such a pace I could barely make out one phrase in three. Every so often a raucous cheer would sound, a player would sweep up his winnings, and the betting would start again.

  I glanced at Marchmont, whose eyes had assumed a kind of glassy absorption. He watched the gambling almost as if he were trying to commit the scene to memory. One of the group, a gangly, pale-skinned fellow with hooded eyes, had sidled over and appeared to be inviting us to lay a bet. Marchmont raised his eyebrows at me in a
n enquiring way. I was still cautious, having heard tales of men losing their earnings, stock money and even the coat off their back in less than an hour. So I paused for a moment, and said, ‘Say a gen?’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ said Marchmont with a wink. I handed over my shilling, and the lad made a mark of it. Another flurry of betting followed. When the tossing began, I found myself, astonishingly, on a lucky streak. I bet ‘tails’ three times, and three times it came up. Emboldened, I raised my stake to a couple of shillings, bet ‘heads’, and won again. My good fortune had been noted by the regulars, who chaffed me good-naturedly and claimed I was an old hand at the game. It was only when I began wagering five bob on a throw that my luck seemed to turn, and as abruptly as my winnings had jingled in my pockets I now felt them emptying, until I was down to my last couter, then my last gen, then to my last row of halfpennies. At times I suspected a certain quickness of hand had determined which side the coin fell, but it was not enough evidence on which to accuse anyone – and I would not have dared to in any case. I had dropped about eighteen shillings when the tout’s cry pierced the air – Cool eslop! – and the costers, pausing only to scoop up their coins, hurriedly dispersed down the various alleys off the court.

  The reason for this sudden alarum became clear when two constables strode into view, by which time our gambling friends had scattered from sight – ‘like rats up a drainpipe’, chuckled Marchmont. It didn’t take long to ascertain what eslop was back slang for. The afternoon was darkening grainily by now, and as we walked past, one of the policemen tipped his helmet and murmured Guvnor. It seemed there was not a soul in this neighbourhood who didn’t know him. The thunderous wheel traffic of Euston Road could be heard as we headed out of Somers Town, and Marchmont suggested that I come to his office the next morning to dictate the day’s report. He then asked me how I had enjoyed the three-up.

  ‘Well enough,’ and then told him how much I had dropped.

  ‘And that was not all the money you lost today,’ he said in a shrewd voice. I was not certain what he meant by this. He had come to a halt, and I saw under the gas lamp that his expression was watchful.

  ‘That last house we visited on Hampden Street,’ he said. ‘The man we talked to.’

  ‘The surgeon,’ I said, nodding, though still in the dark as to his meaning.

  ‘I saw you part with some money.’ I heard reproof in his tone, and waited. ‘What did you give him?’

  ‘Not much. A few bob,’ I shrugged. I didn’t realise that Marchmont had seen this transaction, but I ought to have done: very little was lost on him. ‘The fellow was near to destitute. He’d lost his wife and child –’

  ‘You will hear many such tales of woe in Somers Town,’ he said.

  ‘You . . . didn’t believe him?’

  ‘Oh, I believed him entirely. That is not my point. Amongst such people you will achieve nothing by alms giving. Our mission is to observe, to enquire, to report. It is not ours to interfere.’

  ‘To interfere?’ I said, baffled. ‘But – is it not our common duty to save a fellow from starvation?’

  Marchmont was shaking his head. ‘Mr Wildeblood, listen to me. There is but one way of relieving the poor, and that is by developing their powers of self-reliance – not in treating them like helpless children and offending their independence of character. I know whereof I speak. You will only demean a man by giving him money, and bankrupt yourself to boot.’

  ‘I’m not sure –’

  ‘You can do nothing,’ he cut in. ‘Do not attempt the impossible.’

  It was the first time I had heard him express this curious philosophy, which I later came to know as laissez-faire, and I felt more surprised than offended. There seemed to me a contradiction in his thinking. At his encouragement, I had just lost a substantial sum in a low game of chance, yet now here he was dealing out stern advice as to why I should not waste a few shillings on a poor man. Wasn’t the former actually a more reprehensible way of dissipating one’s money than the latter? I should perhaps have had this out with him right there, but in those days I was still young, and impressionable, and held Henry Marchmont too much in awe to provoke.

  In the Brill

  YOU HAVE PERHAPS been wondering about my name. Wildeblood. It carries a touch of the outlandish, does it not, a name you could imagine gracing a soldier, or an adventurer, or a desperado of some sort – not the unillustrious son of a provincial chemist, at any rate. But this was the name handed down to me, and I hope I have not dishonoured it. My father, Thomas Wildeblood, whose family came from Swaffham, in Norfolk, showed great promise as a student of biology, and eventually won a scholarship to Oxford, where his talents flourished. He might have achieved further distinction there, I believe, had not the untimely death of his own father obliged him to return home and take over the running of the family pharmacy. He inherited a little money, enough to be able to marry, and later to purchase an old rectory in a village a few miles south of the town, where I was born in the November of 1860.

  Being their only child I was much loved by my parents, though I hesitate to call my boyhood a happy one, at least in the conventional sense of the word. I recall long periods of time spent in my own company, so fearful was my mother that I should mimic the habits and manners of children of an inferior class to our own – or should I say her own, since she was peculiarly conscious of being higher-born than our neighbours. She came of a notable family in Norwich whose money was gone, and because she felt keenly those narrowed circumstances she was the more likely to remind people of her genteel origins. My father, sadly aware of her prickly excess of pride, strove to ensure that I would not inherit it. He encouraged in me his own sensible moderation and a spirit of gregariousness, but a child brought down at dinner to meet the friends of his parents will discover that, however eagerly displayed, his lisping charm soon palls on adult company. Best were the days when he took me with him to the shop in Swaffham, and, while he was engaged with his staff, I was let loose to roam the large storeroom at the back, gazing up at the serried rows of dusty bottles and bulbous flasks, with their esoteric labels and rebarbative odours. The whiff of a sharp chemical will instantly transport me back to those days. If my father was at leisure he would sometimes take me out in the fly to spend an afternoon in the meadows hunting butterflies, whose names he would recite to me with the reverent tenderness of a poet.

  These treats, alas, were rare, for he was much occupied with business and I was set to work every morning under my mother’s tutelage: she had taught me to read, including some grammar and scripture, for neither of which I exhibited any aptitude. (My poor mother. Unlike my father, she was devoutly Christian, and fostered hopes that I might one day be a bishop!) Having parsed screeds of prose or recited however many psalms till midday, I could do as I wished, so long as I never trespassed beyond the fence at the bottom of our long sloping garden. How did I fill those hours? Let me own my favourite means of diversion. One was to examine the natural world, such as the swampish green depths of our pond, where fat goldfish nosed through the murk and frogs bulged pensively; or to watch a spider patiently wrapping a fly in its delicate cocoon of death. One preoccupation, though, actually had the virtue of a purpose. In the long corridor upstairs a deep alcove was set into the wall, so deep that I could fit myself within it and, silent as an icon in its niche, sit at drawing for hours, a block of paper against my knees. I must have been a bloodthirsty little cuss, for the only thing I ever drew were pictures of historic battles – bodies sprouting arrows from the longbows at Agincourt, kilted Highlanders brutally dismembered at Culloden, Nelson dying on the deck at Trafalgar – which I would then present before my mother’s doubtful gaze. It was only when she heard the twang of the Swaffham commoner in my voice – I have it still – that my mother realised her efforts of social engineering had been in vain. Denied playmates of my own age, I had fallen back on the company of the only other people about, that is, our servants – John, the old gardener, and his wife Eli
za, our housekeeper – whom I came to regard as my dear friends. My only friends. Even now, to think of their endless good-humoured patience with me, the brat of the house, squeezes on my heart. It will probably not strike you as any great privilege to be ferried about in a wheelbarrow, or to stand close to a bonfire and feel its crackling heat on your face, or (what would have horrified my mother) to be allowed to scrape the remains of Eliza’s custard bowl. But such were they to me. I find that I miss the sight of that garden more than any other.

  Belatedly, then, my mother acceded to my father’s long-urged belief that I be sent to school, where I should not only benefit from a more rounded education but learn how to associate with a rowdy class of strangers, otherwise known as my peers. You would perhaps expect from the above narrative that I had grown up cosseted and unaffectionate, a creature ill-equipped for society at large. Cosseted I had certainly been (school offered a savage corrective there) but I was not unaffectionate. On the contrary, when affection at last did come, from a source other than my own limited sphere, it acted upon me with an exigency that was tidal, overwhelming and calamitous. I had not the buoyancy to cope with it, and, struggle though I might, it pulled me under as irresistibly as a vortex. How should I have known that I was so susceptible, I, who had been raised with no keener sense of worldliness than that fat goldfish?