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130

LONDON LABOUR AND the LONDON POOR.

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Jews, and recognised by her Majesty's Government, as an established corporation, with powers to treat and determine on matters of civil and political policy affecting the condition of the Hebrews in this country, and interferes in no way with religious matters. It is neither a metropolitan nor a local nor a detached board, but, as far as the Jews in England may be so described, a national board. This board is elected triennially. The electors are the "seat-holders" in the Jewish synagogues; that is to say, they belong to the class of Jews who promote the support of the synagogues by renting seats, and so paying towards the cost of those establishments.

There are in England, Ireland, and Scotland, about 1000 of these seat-holders exercising the franchise, or rather entitled to exercise it, but many of them are indifferent to the privilege, as is often testified by the apathy shown on the days of election. Perhaps three-fourths of the privileged number may vote. The services of the representatives are gratuitous, and no qualification is required, but the elected are usually the leading metropolitan Jews. The proportion of the electors voting is in the ratio of the deputies elected. London returns 12 deputies; Liverpool, 2; Manchester, 2; Birmingham, 2; Edinburgh, Dublin, (the only places in either Scotland or Ireland returning deputies), Dover, Portsmouth, Southampton, Plymouth, Canterbury, Norwich, Swansea, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and two other places (according to the number of seat-holders), each one deputy, thus making up the number to 30. On election days the attendance, as I have said, is often small, but fluctuating according to any cause of excitement, which, however, is but seldom.

The question which has of late been discussed by this Board, and which is now under consideration, and negotiation with the Education Commissioners of her Majesty's Privy Council, is the obtaining a grant of money in the same proportion as it has been granted to other educational establishments. Nothing has as yet been given to the Jewish schools, and the matter is still undetermined.

In connection with the statistical part of this subject I may mention that the Chief Rabbis each receive 12007. a year; the Readers of the Synagogues, of whom there are twelve in London, from 300l. to 400l. a year each; the Secretaries of the Synagogues, of whom there are also twelve, from 2001. to 3001. each; the twelve under Secretaries from 100l. to 150l. ; and six Dayanim 1007. a year each. These last-mentioned officers are looked upon by many of the Jews, as the "poor curates" With religious or sacerdotal questions the Board may be by the members of the Church of Eng- of Deputies does not, or is not required to meddle; it land as being exceedingly under-paid. The leaves all such matters to the bodies or tribunals I functions of the Dayanim have been already men. have mentioned. Indeed the deputies concern themtioned, and, I may add, that they must have re- selves only with what may be called the public ceived expensive scholarly educations, as for about interests of the Jews, both as a part of the comfour hours daily they have to read the Talmud munity and as a distinct people. The Jewish in the places of worship. institutions, however, are not an exception to the absence of unanimity among the professors of the same creeds, for the members of the Reform Synagogue in Margaret-street, Cavendish-square, are not recognised as entitled to vote, and do not vote, accordingly, in the election of the Jewish deputies. Indeed, the Reform members, whose synagogue was established eight years ago, were formally excommunicated by a declaration of the late Chief Rabbi, but this seems now to be regarded as a mere matter of form, for the members have lately partaken of all the rites to which orthodox Jews are entitled.

The yearly payment of these sacerdotal officials, then, independent of other outlay, amounts to about 11,700.; this is raised from the profits of the seats in the synagogues and voluntary contributions, donations, subscriptions, bequests, &c., among the Jews.

I have before spoken of a Board of Deputies, in connection with the Jews, and now proceed to describe its constitution. It is not a parliament among the Jews, I am told, nor a governing power, but what may be called a directing or regulating body. It is authorized by the body of

LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

OF THE FUNERAL CEREMONIES, FASTS, AND
CUSTOMS OF THE JEWS.

THE funeral ceremonies of the Jews are among the things which tend to preserve the distinctness and peculiarity of this people. Sometimes, though now rarely, the nearest relatives of the deceased wear sackcloth (a coarse crape), and throw ashes and dust on their hair, for the term during which the corpse remains unburied, this term being the same as among Christians. When the corpse is carried to the Jews' burial-ground for interment the coffin is frequently opened, and the corpse addressed, in a Hebrew formula, by any relative, friend, or acquaintance who may be present. The words are to the following purport: "If I have done anything that might be offensive pardon, pardon, pardon." After that the coffin is carried round the burial-ground in a circuit, children chanting the 90th Psalm in its original Hebrew, "a prayer of Moses, the man of God." The passages which the air causes to be most emphatic are these verses :

"3. Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.

"4. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

"5. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

"6. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

"10. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away."

The coffin is then carried into a tent, and the funeral prayers, in Hebrew, are read. When it has been lowered into the grave, the relatives, and indeed all the attendants at the interment, fill up the grave, shovelling in the earth. In the Jews' burial-ground are no distinctions, no vaults or provisions for aristocratic sepulture. The very rich and the very poor, the outcast woman and the virtuous and prosperous gentlewoman, "grossly familiar, side by side consume." A Jewish funeral is a matter of high solemnity.

131

OF THE JEW STREET-SELLERS OF ACCORDIONS,
AND OF THEIR STREET MUSICAL PURSUITS.
I CONCLUDE my account of the Street-Jews with
an account of the accordion sellers.

they are little concerned at present either in the
Although the Jews, as a people, are musical,
sale of musical instruments in the streets, or in
street-music or singing. Until within a few years,
however, the street-sale of accordions was carried
carried on most extensively in the country, even
on by itinerant Jews, and had previously been
in the far north of England. Some years back
well-dressed Jews "travelled" with stocks of
accordions. In many country towns and in gen-
tlemen's country mansions, in taverns, and schools
also, these accordions were then a novelty. The
Jew could play on the instrument, and carried a
book of instructions, which usually formed part of
the bargain, and by the aid of which, he made out,
any one, even without previous knowledge of the
practical art of music, could easily teach himself
wanted to make a good accordion-player. At first
-nothing but a little practice in fingering being
good, two guineas being no unusual price to be
the accordions sold by the Jew hawkers were
paid for one, even to a street-seller, while ten and
accordions were in a few years "made slop,"
twenty shillings were the lower charges. But the
cheap instruments being sent to this country from
price, until the charge fell as low as 3s. 6d. or even
Germany, and sold at less than half their former
2s. 6d.-but only for "rubbish," I was told.
of these instruments came to be known, it was
When the fragility and inferior musical qualities
found almost impossible to sell in the streets even
superior instruments, however reasonable in price,
and thus the trade sunk to a nonentity. So little
pawnbroker, I am assured, will advance money on
demand is there now for these instruments that no
one, however well made.

greater in the country than in London, for in
The itinerant accordion trade was always much
town, I was told, few would be troubled to try, or
even listen, to the tones of an accordion played by
houses.
a street-seller, at their own doors, or in their
hawking accordions in the country, there would
While there were 100 or 120 Jews
not be 20 in London, including even the suburbs,
where the sale was the best.

and

The burial fees are 12s. for children, and from 21. to 31. for adults. These fees are not the pro- 130 Jews hawked accordions in town Calculating that, when the trade was at its best, perty of the parties officating, but form a portion country, and that each sold three a week, at an of the synagogue funds for general purposes, pay-average price of 20s. each, or six in a week at an ment of officers, &c. No fees are charged to the relatives of poor Jews.

Two fasts are rigidly observed by the Jews, and even by those Jews who are usually indifferent to the observances of their religion. These are the Black Fast, in commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the White Fast, in commemoration of the atonement. those occasions the Jews abstain altogether from On each of food for 24 hours, or from sunset to sunset.

average price of 10s. each, the profit being from expended in the course of the year in accordions 50 to 100 per cent., we find upwards of 20,0001. of which, however, little more than a sixth part, or about 3000l., was expended in London. This was only when the trade had all the recommendations of novelty, and in the following year perhaps not thought that the year 1828-9 was the best for the half the amount was realized. One informant sale of these instruments, but he spoke only from memory. At the present time I could not find or hear of one street-Jew selling accordions; I re

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LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

member, however, having seen one within the present year. Most of the Jews who travelled with them have emigrated.

It is very rarely indeed that, fond as the Jews are of music, any of them are to be found in the bands of street-musicians, or of such street-performers as the Ethiopian serenaders. If there be any, I was told, they were probably not pure Jews, but of Christian parentage on one side or the other, and not associating with their own people. At the cheap concert-rooms, however, Jews are frequently singers, but rarely the Jewesses, while some of the twopenny concerts at the East-end are got up and mainly patronized by the poorer class of Jews. Jews are also to be found occasionally among the supernumeraries of the theatres; but, when not professionally engaged, these still live among their own people. I asked one young Jew who occasionally sang at a cheap concert-room, what description of songs they usually sung, and he answered "all kinds." He, it seems, sang comic songs, but his friend Barney, who had just left him, sang sentimental songs. He earned 1s. and sometimes 2s., but more frequently 1s., three or four nights in the week, as he had no regular engagement. In the daytime he worked at cigar-making, but did not like it, it was "so confining." He had likewise sung, but gratuitously, at concerts got up for the benefit of any person "bad off." He knew nothing of the science and art of music. Of the superior class of Jew vocalists and composers, it is not of course necessary here to speak, as they do not come within the scope of my present subject. Of Hebrew youths thus employed in cheap and desultory concert-singing, there are in the winter season, I am told, from 100 to 150, few, if any, depending entirely upon their professional exertions, but being in circumstances similar to those of my young informant.

OF THE STREET-BUYERS OF HOGS'-WASH. THE trade in hogs'-wash, or in the refuse of the table, is by no means insignificant. The streetbuyers are of the costermonger class, and some of them have been costermongers, and "when not kept going regular on wash," I was told, are "costers still," but with the advantage of having donkeys, ponies, or horses and carts, and frequently shops, as the majority of the wash-buyers have; for they are often greengrocers as well as

costermongers.

The hogs' food obtained by these street-folk, or, as I most frequently heard it called, the "wash," is procured from the eating-houses, the coffee-houses which are also eating-houses (with "hot joints from 12 to 4"), the hotels, the clubhouses, the larger mansions, and the public institutions. It is composed of the scum and lees of all broths and soups; of the washings of cooking utensils, and of the dishes and plates used at dinners and suppers; of small pieces of meat left on the plates of the diners in taverns, clubs, or cook-shops; of pieces of potato, or any remains of vegetables; of any viands, such as puddings, left in the plates in the same manner; of gristle; of

pieces of stale bread, or bread left at table; occasionally of meat kept, whether cooked or uncooked, until "blown," and unfit for consump tion (one man told me that he had found whole legs of mutton in the wash he bought from a great eating-house, but very rarely) of potatopeelings; of old and bad potatoes; of "stock," or the remains of meat stewed for soup, which was not good enough for sale to be re-used by the poor; of parings of every kind of cheese or meat; and of the many things which are considered " only fit for pigs."

It is not always, however, that the unconsumed food of great houses or of public bodies (where the dinners are a part of the institution) goes to the wash-tub. At Buckingham-palace, I am told, it is given to poor people who have tickets for the receipt of it. At Lincoln's-inn the refuse or leavings of the bar dinners are sold to men who retail them, usually small chandlers, and the poor people, who have the means, buy this broken meat very readily at 4d., 6d., and 8d. the pound, which is cheap for good cooked meat. Pie-crust, obtained by its purveyors in the same way, is sold, perhaps with a small portion of the contents of the pie, in penny and twopenny-worths. man familiar with this trade told me that among the best customers for this kind of second-hand food were women of the town of the poorer class, who were always ready, whenever they had a few pence at command, to buy what was tasty, cheap, and ready-cooked, because "they hadn't no trouble with it, but only just to eat it."

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One of the principal sources of the "wash supply is the cook-shops, or eating-houses, where the "leavings" on the plates are either the perquisites of the waiters or waitresses, or looked sharply after by master or mistress. There are also in these places the remains of soups, and the potato-peelings, &c., of which I have spoken, together with the keen appropriation to a profitable use of every crumb and scrap-when it is a portion of the gains of a servant, or when it adds to the receipts of the proprietor. In calculating the purchase-value of the good-will of an eatinghouse, the wash" is as carefully considered as is the number of daily guests.

One of the principal street-buyers from the eating-houses, and in several parts of town, is Jemmy Divine, of Lambeth. He is a pig-dealer, but also sells his wash to others who keep pigs. He sends round a cart and horse under the care of a boy, or of a man, whom he may have employed, or drives it himself, and he often has more carts than one. In his cart are two or three tubs, well secured, so that they may not be jostled out, into which the wash is deposited. He contracts by the week, month, or quarter, with hotel-keepers and others, for their wash, paying from 10l. to as high as 50l. a year, about 207. being an average for well-frequented taverns and “ dining-rooms." The wash-tubs on the premises of these buyers are often offensive, sometimes sending forth very sour smells.

In Sharp's-alley, Smithfield, is another man buying quantities of wash, and buying fat and

grease extensively. There is one also in Prince'sstreet, Lambeth, who makes it his sole business to collect hogs'-wash; he was formerly a coalheaver and wretchedly poor, but is now able to make a decent livelihood in this trade, keeping a pony and cart. He generally keeps about 30 pigs, but also sells hogs' food retail to any pigkeeper, the price being 4d. to 6d. a pailfull, according to the quality, as the collectors are always anxious to have the wash "rich," and will not buy it if cabbage-leaves or the parings of green vegetables form a part of it. This man and the others often employ lads to go round for wash, paying them 28. a week, and finding them in board. They are the same class of boys as those I have described as coster-boys, and are often strong young fellows. These lads-or men hired for the purpose-are sometimes sent round to the smaller cook-shops and to private houses, where the wash is given to them for the trouble of carrying it away, in preference to its being thrown down the drain. Sometimes only 1d. a pail is paid by the streetbuyer, provided the stuff be taken away punctually and regularly. These youths or men carry pails after the fashion of a milkman.

The supply from the workhouses is very large. It is often that the paupers do not eat all the rice-pudding allowed, or all the bread, while soup is frequently left, and potatoes; and these leavings are worthless, except for pig-meat, as they would soon turn sour. It is the same, though not to the same extent, in the prisons.

What I have said of some of the larger eatinghouses relates also to the club-houses.

There are a number of wash-buyers in the suburbs, who purchase, or obtain their stock gratuitously, at gentlemen's houses, and retail it either to those who feed pigs as a business, or else to the many, I was told, who live a little way out of town, and "like to grow their own bacon." Many of these men perform the work themselves, without a horse and cart, and are on their feet every day and all day long, except on Sundays, carrying hogs'-wash from the seller, or to the buyer. One man, who had been in this trade at Woolwich, told me that he kept pigs at one time, but ceased to do so, as his customers often murmured at the thin quality of the wash, declaring that he gave all the best to his own animals.

If it be estimated that there are 200 men daily buying hogs'-wash in London and the suburbs, within 15 miles, and that each collects only 20 pails per day, paying 2d. per pail (thus allowing for what is collected without purchase), we find 10,4007. expended annually in buying hogs'-wash.

OF THE STREET-BUYERS OF TEA-LEAVES. An extensive trade, but less extensive, I am informed, than it was a few years ago, is carried on in tea-leaves, or in the leaves of the herb after their having been subjected, in the usual way, to decoction. These leaves are, so to speak, remanufactured, in spite of great risk and frequent exposure, and in defiance of the law. The 17th Geo. III., c. 29, is positive and stringent on the subject:

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of tea, or not, who shall dye or fabricate any sloeEvery person, whether a dealer in or seller leaves, liquorice-leaves or the leaves of tea that have been used, or the leaves of the ash, elder or other tree, shrub or plant, in imitation of tea, or Japonica, copperas, sugar, molasses, clay, logwood who shall mix or colour such leaves with terra sale, or have in custody, any such adulterations or other ingredient, or who shall sell or expose to in imitation of tea, shall for every pound forfeit, on conviction, by the oath of one witness, before to the House of Correction for not more than one justice, 51.; or, on non-payment, be committed twelve or less than six months."

oath of an excise officer, or any one, by whom he
The same act also authorizes a magistrate, on the
the herbs, or spurious teas, and the whole appa-
suspects this illicit trade to be carried on, to seize
herbs to be burnt and the other articles sold, the
ratus that may be found on the premises, the
proceeds of such a sale, after the payment of ex-
poor of the parish.
penses, going half to the informer and half to the

It appears evident, from the words of this act for the robbery of the public and the defrauding which I have italicised, that the use of tea-leaves of the revenue has been long in practice. The resorted to—the substitutes most popular with the extract also shows what other cheats were formerly tea-manufacturers at one time being sloe-leaves. If, however, one-tenth of the statements touching the juice of its sour, astringent fruit, during the warapplications of the leaves of the sloe-tree, and of the have been regarded commercially as one of the time, had any foundation in truth, the sloe must most valuable of our native productions, supplying our ladies with their tea, and our gentlemen with their port-wine.

Women and men, three-fourths of the number
female servants in the larger, and of the shop-
being women, go about buying tea-leaves of the
keepers' wives in the smaller, houses. But the
great purveyors of these things are the char-
leaves are often reserved for them to be thrown on
women. In the houses where they char the tea-
dust, or else they form a part of their perquisites,
the carpets when swept, as a means of allaying the
and are often asked for if not offered. The mis-
employed in cleaning every other morning, had
tress of a coffee-shop told me that her charwoman,
the tea-leaves as a part of her remuneration, or as
with them her employer never inquired, although
a matter of course. What the charwoman did
she was always anxious to obtain them, and she
referred me to the poor woman in question. I
found her in a very clean apartment on the second
hale woman, with what may be called an indus-
floor of a decent house in Somers-town; a strong
trious look. She was middle-aged, and a widow,
bourhood, and had regular employment.
with one daughter, then a nursemaid in the neigh-

ever I can, and the most at two coffee-shops that
"Yes," she said, "I get the tea-leaves when-
I work at, but neither of them have so many as
they used to have. I think it's because cocoa's
come so much to be asked for in them, and so

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LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR.

they sell less tea. I buy tea-leaves only at one place. It's a very large family, and I give the servant 4d. and sometimes 3d. or 2d. a fortnight for them, but I'm nothing in pocket, for the young girl is a bit of a relation of mine, and it's like a trifle of pocket-money for her. She gives a penny every time she goes to her chapel, and so do I; there's a box for it fixed near the door. O yes, her mistress knows I buy them, for her mistress knew me before she was married, and that's about 15 or 16 years since. When I've got this basin (producing it) full I sell it, generally for 4d. I don't know what the leaves in it will weigh, and I have never sold them by weight, but I believe some have. Perhaps they might weigh, as damp as some of them are, about a pound. I sell them to a chandler now. I have sold them to a rag-and-bottle-shop. I've had men and women call upon me and offer to buy them, but not lately, and I never liked the looks of them, and never sold them any. I don't know what they're wanted for, but I've heard that they 're mixed with new tea. I have nothing to do with that. I get them honestly and sell them honestly, and that's all I can say about it. Every little helps, and if rich people won't pay poor people properly, then poor people can't be expected to be very nice. But I don't complain, and that's all I know about it."

The chandler in question knew nothing of the trade in tea-leaves, he said; he bought none, and he did not know that any of the shopkeepers did, and he could not form a notion what they could be wanted for, if it wasn't to sweep carpets!

This mode of buying or collecting is, I am told the commonest mode of any, and it certainly presents some peculiarities. The leaves which are to form the spurious tea are collected, in great measure, by a class who are perhaps more likely than any other to have themselves to buy and drink the stuff which they have helped to produce! By charwomen and washer-women a nice cup of tea" in the afternoon during their work is generally classed among the comforts of existence, yet they are the very persons who sell the tea-leaves which are to make

their "much prized beverage." It is curious to reflect also, that as tea-leaves are used indiscriminately for being re-made into what is considered new tea, what must be the strength of our tea in a few years. Now all housewives complain that twice the quantity of tea is required to make the infusion of the same strength as formerly, and if the collection of old tea-leaves continues, and the refuse leaves are to be dried and re-dried perpetually, surely we must get to use pounds where we now do ounces.

A man formerly in the tea-leaf business, and very anxious not to be known-but upon whose information, I am assured from a respectable source, full reliance may be placed-gave me the following account :—

"My father kept a little shop in the general line, and I helped him; so I was partly brought up to the small way. But I was adrift by myself when I was quite young-18 or so perhaps. I can read and write well enough, but I was

rather of too gay a turn to be steady. Besides, father was very poor at times, and could seldom pay me anything, if I worked ever so. He was very fond of his belly too, and I've known him, when he's had a bit of luck, or a run of business, go and stuff hisself with fat roast pork at a cook-shop till he could hardly waddle, and then come home and lock hisself upstairs in his bedroom and sleep three parts of the afternoon. (My mother was dead.) But father was a kind-hearted man for all that, and for all his roast pork, was as thin as a whipping-post. I kept myself when I left him, just off and on like, by collecting grease, and all that; it can't be done so easy now, I fancy; so I got into the tea-leaf business, but father had nothing to do with it. An elderly sort of a woman who I met with in my collecting, and who seemed to take a sort of fancy to me, put me up to the leaves. She was an out-and-out hand at anything that way herself. Then I bought tea-leaves with other things, for I suppose for four or five years. How long ago is it? O, never mind, sir, a few years. I bought them at many sorts of houses, and carried a box of needles, and odds and ends, as a sort of introduction. There wasn't much of that wanted though, for I called, when I could, soon in the mornings before the family was up, and some ladies don't get up till 10 or 11 you know. The masters wasn't much; it was the mistresses I cared about, because they are often such Tartars to the maids and always a-poking in the way.

"I've tried to do business in the great lords' houses in the squares and about the parks, but there was mostly somebody about there to hinder you. Besides, the servants in such places are often on board wages, and often, when they 're not on board wages, find their own tea and sugar, and little of the tea-leaves is saved when every one has a separate pot of tea; so there's no good to be done there. Large houses in trade where a number of young men is boarded, drapers or grocers, is among the best places, as there is often a housekeeper there to deal with, and no mistress to bother. I always bought by the lot. If you offered to weigh you would not be able to clear anything, as they'd be sure to give the leaves a extra wetting. I put handfulls of the leaves to my nose, and could tell from the smell whether they were hard drawn or not. When they isn't hard drawn they answer best, and them I put to one side. I had a bag like a lawyer's blue bag, with three divisions in it, to put my leaves into, and so keep them 'sunder. Yes, I've bought of charwomen, but somehow I think they did'nt much admire selling to me. I hardly know how I made them out, but one told me of another. They like the shops better for their leaves, I think; because they can get a bit of cheese, or snuff, or candles for them there; though I don't know much about the shop-work in this line. I've often been tried to be took in by the servants. I've found leaves in the lot offered to me to buy what was all dusty, and had been used for sweeping; and if I'd sold them with my stock they'd have been stopped out of the next

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