The Life of Riley

OLIVE’S SIXTY SECOND POST

Olive

Mike, I’d like to do a story about my school days.

Mike

That’s a great idea, Ollie.

I think it was one of the best parts of the movie we made together, when we found your old school building and photos of you kids in pinafores.

Here’s the building, The Central School in Broken Hill.

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And here’s you all circling the playground before school starts
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Sitting in your Pinnies on the school steps (pinafores) …..
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Is one of them you?…. Hard to tell, isn’t it?
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Olive

I want to talk about all of that.

Mike

And even running in your Pinnies . Maybe that’s you out in front!

It could be, Ollie. It’s the right school and the right year, more or less.

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Olive

Let me talk, Mike

Mike

Of course. Ollie.

But first, I have to remind folks of what you actually looked like as a school girl. O.K.?

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Mike

Actually, I’m not quite ready. I’ve go three movies of you talking to upload, Ollie. You on school and the water shortage. (The tap was padlocked)

Then, you on punishment, getting your whacks.

Lastly, You and old Mother Gillings. I hope to have them done and posted here in a few hours. Sorry!

Here they are. I’ve had so much trouble with these on Youtube and have had to move to Yahoo for the second two.

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Henry Mayhew is someone I’ve been telling Ollie about.

Henry was born in London in 1812 and died there in 1887, 12 years before Ollie’s birth.

What so special about Mr. Mayhew? In the 1850 he published 3 books containing interviews he’d done with the London poor, street people.

It seems that Mayhew had mastered the new skill of shorthand and he tramped the noisy, dirty streets of London, interviewing with great compassion all the trades he found there. Charles Dickens drew heavily on what Mayhew revealed.

What is remarkable for Ollie and us is that through Mayhew’s hand, we hear the voices of these young street workers, plying a hundred trades now long forgotten.

Here, I’ve chosen his encounter with a little girl of 8 who he finds selling watercress, or the “creases” as she calls them.

I thought of this girl because she was briefly in school and was beaten by her teacher, as was Ollie.

But the street seller could not stay to learn to read and write, as did Ollie sixty years later.

Perhaps this little battler, a girl without a name, was still alive when Ollie was born on the other side of the world

Henry Mayhew wrote in volume one: “I shall consider the whole of the metropolitan poor under three separate phases, according as (1) they will work, (2) they can’t work, and (3) they won’t work.”[9]

He interviewed everyone—beggars, street-entertainers (such as Punch and Judy men), market traders, prostitutes, labourers, sweatshop workers.

He even gets down to the “mudlarks” who searched the stinking mud on the banks of the River Thames for wood, metal, rope and coal from passing ships.

He talks to the “pure-finders” who gathered dog faeces to sell to tanners. He described their clothes, how and where they lived, their entertainments and customs, and made detailed estimates of the numbers and incomes of those practicing each trade.

The books make fascinating reading, showing how marginal and precarious many people’s lives were, in what, at that time, must have been the richest city in the world.
WIkipedia
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WATERCRESS GIRL.

The little watercress girl who gave me the
following statement, although only eight years
of age, had entirely lost all childish ways, and
was, indeed, in thoughts and manner, a woman.

There was something cruelly pathetic in hearing
this infant, so young that her features had
scarcely formed themselves, talking of the bit-
terest struggles of life, with the calm earnest-
ness of one who had endured them all.

I didnot know how to talk with her. At first I
treated her as a child, speaking on childish sub-
jects; so that I might, by being familiar with
her, remove all shyness, and get her to narrate
her life freely.

I asked her about her toys and
her games with her companions; but the look
of amazement that answered me soon put an
end to any attempt at fun on my part.

Her little face, pale and thin with priva-
tion, was wrinkled where the dimples ought to
have been, and she would sigh frequently.

When some hot dinner was offered to her, she would
not touch it, because, if she eat too much, “it
made her sick,” she said; “and she wasn’t
used to meat, only on a Sunday.”

The poor child, although the weather was
severe, was dressed in a thin cotton gown, with
a threadbare shawl wrapped round her shoulders.

She wore no covering to her head, and the long
rusty hair stood out in all directions. When she
walked she shuffled along, for fear that the
large carpet slippers that served her for shoes
should slip off her feet.

Here she tells her story

“I go about the streets with water-creases,
crying, `Four bunches a penny, water-creases.’

I am just eight years old — that’s all, and I’ve a
big sister, and a brother and a sister younger
than I am. On and off, I’ve been very near a
twelvemonth in the streets.

Before that, I had to take care of a baby for my aunt. No, it
wasn’t heavy — it was only two months old; but
I minded it for ever such a time — till it could
walk.

It was a very nice little baby, not a very
pretty one; but, if I touched it under the chin,
it would laugh.

Before I had the baby, I used
to help mother, who was in the fur trade; and,
if there was any slits in the fur, I’d sew them
up.

My mother learned me to needle-work and
to knit when I was about five. I used to go to
school, too; but I wasn’t there long.

I’ve forgot all about it now, it’s such a time ago; and mother
took me away because the master whacked me,
though the missus use’n't to never touch me.

I didn’t like him at all. What do you think? he
hit me three times, ever so hard, across the face
with his cane, and made me go dancing down
stairs; and when mother saw the marks on my
cheek, she went to blow him up, but she couldn’t
see him — he was afraid. That’s why I left
school.

“The creases (watercress) is so bad now, that I haven’t
been out with ‘em for three days. They’re so
cold, people won’t buy ‘em; for when I goes up
to them, they say, `They’ll freeze our bellies.’

Besides, in the market, they won’t sell a ha’penny
handful now — they’re ris to a penny and tup-
pence.

In summer there’s lots, and ‘most as
cheap as dirt; but I have to be down at Far-
ringdon-market between four and five, or else I
can’t get any creases, because everyone almost
– especially the Irish — is selling them, and
they’re picked up so quick.

Some of the sales-
women — we never calls ‘em ladies — is very kind
to us children, and some of them altogether
spiteful.

The good one will give you a bunch
for nothing, when they’re cheap; but the others,
cruel ones, if you try to bate them a farden less
than they ask you, will say, `Go along with you,
you’re no good.’

I used to go down to market
along with another girl, as must be about four-
teen, ‘cos she does her back hair up.

When we’ve
bought a lot, we sits down on a door-step, and
ties up the bunches.

We never goes home to
breakfast till we’ve sold out; but, if it’s very
late, then I buys a penn’orth of pudden, which
is very nice with gravy.

I don’t know hardly
one of the people, as goes to Farringdon, to talk
to; they never speaks to me, so I don’t speak to
them. We children never play down there, ‘cos
we’re thinking of our living.

No; people never
pities me in the street — excepting one gentleman,
and he says, says he, `What do you do out so
soon in the morning?’ but he gave me nothink
– he only walked away.

“It’s very cold before winter comes on reg’-
lar — specially getting up of a morning.

I gets up in the dark by the light of the lamp in the
court. When the snow is on the ground, there’s
no creases.

I bears the cold — you must; so I
puts my hands under my shawl, though it hurts
‘em to take hold of the creases, especially when
we takes ‘em to the pump to wash ‘em. No; I
never see any children crying — it’s no use.

“Sometimes I make a great deal of money.

One day I took 1s. 6d., and the creases cost 6d.;
but it isn’t often I get such luck as that.

I oftener makes 3d. or 4d. than 1s.; and then I’m
at work, crying, “Creases, four bunches a penny,
creases!” from six in the morning to about ten.

The shops buys most of
me. Some of ‘em says, `Oh! I ain’t a-goin’ to
give a penny for these;’ and they want ‘em at
the same price as I buys ‘em at.

“I always give mother my money, she’s so
very good to me. She don’t often beat me; but,
when she do, she don’t play with me.

She’s very poor, and goes out cleaning rooms some-
times, now she don’t work at the fur. I ain’t
got no father, he’s a father-in-law. No; mother
ain’t married again — he’s a father-in-law.

He grinds scissors, and he’s very good to me. No;
I dont mean by that that he says kind things to
me, for he never hardly speaks.

When I gets
home, after selling creases, I stops at home. I
puts the room to rights: mother don’t make me
do it, I does it myself.

I cleans the chairs,
though there’s only two to clean. I takes a tub
and scrubbing-brush and flannel, and scrubs the
floor — that’s what I do three or four times a
week.

“I don’t have no dinner. Mother gives me
two slices of bread-and-butter and a cup of tea
for breakfast, and then I go till tea, and has the
same.

We has meat of a Sunday, and, of course,
I should like to have it every day. Mother has
just the same to eat as we has, but she takes
more tea — three cups, sometimes.

No; I never
has no sweet-stuff; I never buy none — I don’t
like it. Sometimes we has a game of ` honey-
pots’ with the girls in the court, but not often.

Me and Carry H — carries the little ‘uns. We
plays, too, at `kiss-in-the-ring.’ I knows a good
many games, but I don’t play at ‘em, ‘cos going
out with creases tires me.

On a Friday night,
too, I goes to a Jew’s house till eleven o’clock
on Saturday night. All I has to do is to snuff
the candles and poke the fire.

You see they
keep their Sabbath then, and they won’t touch
anything; so they gives me my wittals and 1½d.
and I does it for ‘em.

I have a reg’lar good lot
to eat. Supper of Friday night, and tea after
that, and fried fish of a Saturday morning, and
meat for dinner, and tea, and supper, and I like
it very well.

“Oh, yes; I’ve got some toys at home. I’ve
a fire-place, and a box of toys, and a knife and
fork, and two little chairs.

The Jews gave ‘em
to me where I go to on a Friday, and that’s why
I said they was very kind to me.

I never had
no doll; but I misses little sister — she’s only
two years old. We don’t sleep in the same room;
for father and mother sleeps with little sister in
the one pair, and me and brother and other sis-
ter sleeps in the top room.

I always goes to
bed at seven, ‘cos I has to be up so early.

“I am a capital hand at bargaining — but
only at buying watercreases. They can’t take
me in.

If the woman tries to give me a small
handful of creases, I says, `I ain’t a goin’ to
have that for a ha’porth,’ and I go to the next
basket, and so on, all round.

I know the
quantities very well. For a penny I ought to
have a full market hand, or as much as I could
carry in my arms at one time, without spilling.

For 3d. I has a lap full, enough to earn about
a shilling; and for 6d. I gets as many as crams
my basket.

I can’t read or write, but I knows
how many pennies goes to a shilling, why,
twelve, of course, but I don’t know how many
ha’pence there is, though there’s two to a penny.
When I’ve bought 3d. of creases,

I ties ‘em up
into as many little bundles as I can. They
must look biggish, or the people won’t buy
them, some puffs them out as much as they’ll
go.

All my money I earns I puts in a club
and draws it out to buy clothes with.

It’s
better than spending it in sweet-stuff, for them
as has a living to earn. Besides it’s like a child
to care for sugar-sticks, and not like one who’s
got a living and vittals to earn.

I aint a child,
and I shan’t be a woman till I’m twenty, but
I’m past eight, I am.

I don’t know nothing
about what I earns during the year, I only
know how many pennies goes to a shilling, and
two ha’pence goes to a penny, and four fardens
goes to a penny.

I knows, too, how many
fardens goes to tuppence — eight. That’s as
much as I wants to know for the markets.”

So ends the account of the little watercress seller, speaking round about 1852 in London.