LONDON PRIDE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2665, 10 August 1889, Page 5 (Supplement)

LONDON PRIDE.

HOW SOME WOMEN WORK. [15v Jajiks GiiKK.wvoon, i.v Bristol Times.] Far bo ib from me, as a Cockney born anil bred, to deny that Kngland is the first country in the world, or that London is comparably the superior of any other city in Kurope, Asia, Africa or America. That it ia the richest goes without saying, and that it ranks first and foremost, as regards everything derivable from a careful and constant cultivation of all that pertains to the loftiest standard of civilisation, is equally undeniable. Controlled by an enlightened system of government, property needs no other protection worth mentioning than is provided by the public morality. In comparative degree, happiness reigns in the homes of all classes. There is employment at a, fair rate of wages for all who are willing to work, and cosy asylums for those who, by ago or infirmity, are unfitted for labour; and the rights of manhood and the natural claims of womanhood being equally respected, comfort and content, peace and prosperity, join hands and raise their voices in proclaiming London to be a place to be proud of. Should there be those who demur to this high estimate of the first, capital in creation, it may be safely soil of them that it is their own fault. They are selfdebarred from the privilege of wearing iu thnir button hoio the 83 T inbol of their faith—a sprig of London Pride. If it worn not for their provoking habit of prying; and spying in tho undercurrents of social cxi-teufie, they might spare themselves tho prtin of discovering anythiiisr objectionable. I can, alas ! answer for this last, boing one of that unfortunate class of persom who can tako nothing for granted or rest content with superficial knowledge. I liavo a perpetual craving to learn what is goine , on beucath tho unper crust of society, and I have now and again, and after several years of practice, brought to light much curious m-itter. I have dug to the roots of " London Pride " ; and, only that I more than half suspected their existence beforehand, tho number of canker-worms I discovered gnawing at and exterminating the vital principle of that noble plant would have very ranch startled me.

As regards the labouring women of " Albion's pride and fdory," for example, notwithstanding ouv boast as Britons that we, the natives thereof, "never, never," and onoo again and for tho third time, " never" will be slaves, it is maintain able there is more than a little of bombast and empty bragging in the bold declaration. Put to tho test, it will no more hold water than a barrel deprived of its hoops. As much, if not more, might be truthfully written, respecting , the object slavery of hundreds of Englishwomen residing within the live mile radius of Charing Gross, than employed ths powerful pen of Mrs Boeehor Stowo before the healing of the rupture between the Northern and Southern States of America.

As most people arc aware, women's work in what is known as the Black Country has recently been a subject of inquiry before a Royal Commission. Could it bo possible, the Royal Commissioners wished to know, that females, old and young—mere girls, matrons, and aged grandmothers — worked in an ordinary smithy at blacksmith's work, and that for such a paltry pittance they were in danger of starving on it ? Bless the innocent hearts of those noble gentlemen!—had they held their Commission a quarter of a century since, they might even then have had the evideneo of a past fivo arid twenty ye.irs laid beforo them. Cradley and Lye'warst, both of which places aro within twenty minutes' railway journey of the bravo town of Birmingham, are, and always have been, the head-quarters of the female chain and bolt aud nail makers. Nor is it by license of fanciful phraseology that these poor souls are dubbed ""blacksmiths." It is a fact, hard as their own corned hands. Theirs is a more laborious occupation than thnt of the main blacksmiths with whom we are all familiar, inasmuch as tho latter never dream of wielding , more than one hammer at a time, whereas the unfortunate forge woman not unfrequently uses two—a largo one called an and which is worked by means of a treadle, and a smaller one in the usual way. Without a gown-bodice, generally speaking, so that they may move their arms with greater freedom, and with a wisp of rag or a man's cap to keep their long hair from tumbling over their eyes, they toil and sweat with their feet on the ashes, and all begrimed with soot and smoke, for fiften hours a day, and deem themselves lucky if they are able to earn as many pence in the time. Take, the female hands working at the great steam brick factories at Stourbridge aud other places. What would be said if such •' hard labour " were exacted of criminals who at preseut are put to treadmill work or picking oakum ? The humanitarian section of the community would be up in arms, aud the walls of Exterhall, crowded from floor to ceiliug, would echo indignant denunciations against such, worse than Kgyptiau slavery. lam speaking of the girls who carry clay for tho moulders. It is in huge wet lumps, each weighing say forty pounds. The young woman, who looks as though she had been recently rescued from a reeking clay-pit, goes down on one knee before the bench on which are arranged the lumps newly ground out oil the mill. Lifting ono of them, she deftly poises it on her head, then rises, and hugging another lump of tho same size and weight to her breast, trudges off with her load to where the moulder is working; and this is her employment from morniug till night, summer and winter. I should add that it is some few years since I witnessed this edifying spectacle, but I have no reasons for supposing aDy other than that it is still going on.

But the investigator in search of choice examples of how some women work, need not travel one of Lnn J:m. Within tho metropolitan area then , :iro a dozen places w'iero the " gentler sex " are habitually employed at an occupation which, though

' perhaps not. so laborious a» ohain-makins,' or clay-carrying , , is immeasurably more degrading , . I have put the uumber of places where is performed the drudgery I am about to describe at a dozen ; but that, probably, is much loss than tho actual number. There aro as many of them, indeed, as there aro parish dust contractors. As tho reader in no doubt aware in every metropolitan district it is the business of some person, who undertakes the job, to remove from the premises of every householder all dustbin refuse, and to convey the same away in suitable vehicles ; but what becomes of the hundreds of cartloads yielded by anyone large parish in the course of a single w«eic, even those who give any thought to the matter have but a vague idea. They are aware that ashes are in some way utilised in the making of bricks, and that is about all they know about it. But the said ashes—" brees ' is the technical name,-have first to be arrived at, and that by a process that delies delicate dcsirii't'on.

The dust yard is generally situated on the banks of some canal, for convenience of barge-carriage; but there is an entrance to it from an adjacent street as well, and approaching it from thi3 direc tiou the explorer discorers several enormous mounds, some of the dust cr " brees" ready prepared for the brickfield, and others unmanipulated, and just as the dust men have shot it out of their carts, after their hoiise-to-hon.se collection?. It was a bitterly cold day when I last beheld the strange siuht, and the black heaps were streaked with white snow, while a north-east wind was still drifting and whirling it about the yard in iuy particles The sifters, who had been ai work since daylight, hud " knocked off " for a quarter of an hour for luncheon. They presented a spectacle so repulsive that any Jinglinhniim might well tinirle with shame to coutemplrtte it. Excepting two, they were all females, threo young of eighteen or thereabouts, one woman suckling her baby, and three elderly dames, ono of the latter bent half double with au:e and purblind, aud with her poor old wrinkled jaws bound up with a handkerchief, as though her decaying , grinders were racked with aches and pains. They were, all squatted in a great hollow made in the unsifted muck from the dust-bins, and they had made a fire, and browed *ome coffee in an old preserved meat tin. One young woman was toasting a slice ol dusty bread, her toastingfork being a wiro out of au old umbrella.

But they paid more attention to the hnt oofl'oo ♦Jian to eating, and no wonder, for it was horribly cold. They wore well wrapped uo in a way. Thu youuj? womeu were bnuched up in nhawls, and over tlieso, and descending to her hob-nailed bouts, each wore n heavy apron of faekololli and with a breast bib. The woman who was giving her baby maternal nourishment wore, as an overall, a ragged old blua guernsey. They were deplorably dirty. The heavy sackcloth apron each one wore was of a dingier complexion than that of any door-mat, tboir hands and faces were of n correspondinghue, and the younger women's hair was piled thick with fine ash, as a shelf in a neglected room with a year's accumulation of dust. But the oddest feature as regards the younjr women —buxom, bright-eyed, and jolly-looking , , despite their eminently unpleasant occupation— was that their bonnets, battered and wrung out of shape, were as gaily festooned with scraps of soiled ribbon, and crushed and mildewed artificial flowers, as an ancient Jack-iu-the-Greon on the first of May.

In a little while, urged by an ungentle reminder from the yard foreman, the party prepared for work again. Two of the three youner women lillcd and lit a short pipe, the mother removed her babe from her ashy bosom and carefully deposited it in an old oblong fish basket, in which was some hay, and covered it over with an old coat, and the sifting recommenced,

This was how the operation was conducted. JO-tcli of the women was provided with a large sieve, and this was held out before her while one of the lads shovelled into it at least half a bushel of the " raw material." With a deft twist and a jerk of the sieve against her sackprotected body, the woman spread the stuff, and then proceeded to "sort" it. What its component parts were may be pretty nearly guessed—broken crockery, clinkers, and all manner of more or less decayed animal and vegetable matter, fragments of rag, bone, wood, cinders, &o. Each sifter had a separate box or basket for the reception of her various "sorts' , , two in front and two behind, aud one on either side. With her bare arms she manipulated the dreadful collection, and, with the dexterity of a conjurer, threw tho pieces of broken glass this side, the bits of mouldy bread that, the potsherds in front of her, the cabbage stumps over her left shoulder, the scraps of rag over her right; and then what remained in the sieve, being for the most part cinders, was tossed to an adjacent heap.

But nil flinders of finery were seemingly the perquisites of the finder. The faded tuga of ribbons", tho morsels uf lace, the cast-off artificial flower*, &c., these she added to the festooning with which her hat was i>l rendy adorned, and veiy probably she carried thorn homo and brushed thorn up, and washed and ironed them, and retailed them in penn'orths to her youthful female friends who liked to appear smart, but had not the means to buy now ribbons aud flowors.

Meanwhile the sifting was proceeding, and the baskets and boxc3 filling. The debaslied old bonnets were growing more maniaoly gay, and tho sifted dust was accumulating. Over their boot tops, as high on their shins, up to their knees—it crept higher and higher ; and the ashes in their hair thickened, and the tucks and ridges of their shawls aud wraps were full of it. It began to gather in a rope about their necks, as though, dust being their doom, they were about to be choked and buried in it. When it came to this, however, the sifter threw down her sieve, waded out of what she had been burying herself in, shook herself as a dog does when it comes out of the water, lit another pipe, and was ready for work again. And this is the life a female dust-sifter leads, the scene of her labour being, as already meutioned, fairly within sonnd of Bow Bells should the wind hn favourable. While high souled writers are discussing in the newspaper tho burning question, "is chivalry still possible ?" here poor Cinderella toils day by day and all the year round. It is bad enough in all conscience in the depth of winter time ; but what must it he in summer—on a sultry day in August say —one would rather not too closely conjecture. It is far from being a nice subject to treat of; but unless such things are made known, how are poor creatures to be rescued from sackcloth and ashes ? lam afraid, however, that the present generation of sifters will have passed away, and their sons and daughters become adepts at the old trade, if the date of escape frou. their preseut degradation is postponed until Lmdou Pride is humbled to the dust.