LONDON PRIDE!

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2707, 16 November 1889, Page 5 (Supplement)

LONDON PRIDE!

[By Jam as Gkuknwood, is Bristol Times.] A SUNDAY FAIR IN THE CITY. At the instance of a rigorously religious society, whose operations can scarcely be said to meet with universal approval, a worldly-minded pastrycook, the proprietor of a small back-street busiuess, was recently summoned to a London Police Court, to answer the heinous charge of keeping his premises open on Sunday, and of serving a litt'.o boy with a tart. The case was reported in tlm newspapers, and a few days afterwards an editor received a letter from an old lady, residing in South Wales, in which the writer congratulated the authorities on having brought the daring relinquent to book, and expressing a pious wish that, if thero was in London any other individual who so recklessly regarded ths sanctity of the Sabbath, ho would be dealt with without delay, so that the crying scandal in question would no lonarer sully the fair fame of the first city of the world.

Probably the worthy damu herself had never paid a visit to the metropolis, or if she had it is next to certain that her brief holiday could not have passed at or near the east end. There are many social matters that are managed as well as may be within the metropolitan area, and Londoners may well be proud of .the vast number of churches and chapels, not to mention tabernacles and temples, and the handsome total of mission-halls set up in their midst, for the convenience of regular worshippers and the conversion of the ungodly. No one dwelling within earshot of the booming 1 Big Ben at Westminster or the great bell of St. Paul's can truthfully assert, " I should long: ago have shuuned the sin of Sabbath breaking, but I know of no sautuary to which I mitfht flee to be out of the way of temptation." At the same time, it is a disagreeable and discreditable fact that the cily and its environs contain a vast number of persons who treat as nought the sacreduess of the seventh day, in grim proof of which it may be stated that, not far from London bridge, and within a quarter of an hour's easy walk from the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England, a fair is held every Sunday during the hours of morninpr service, attended by thousands of the lower community. They come so hurriedly, trooping in from all quarters soon after ten o'clock—a large number from the Surrey side of the Thames — that a stranger arriving in Bishopsgatestreet about the time mentioned, would suppose that a great fire was raging somewhere in the neighbourhood, and that the mob was hastening to it. But they are merely on their way to the "fair." It is not one ordained by statute, but it has been so long established that the date of its origin cannot be satisfactorily ascertained. It is not a pleasure fair, though of the great crowd ' that patronise it there are few of whom 1 it may be said that melancholy has marked them for it 3 own. Their aspect, at all events, is not that of a multitude, the purpose of whose outing is fun and frolic, with plenty of money in their pockets to indulge in any amusement that may take their fancy. Folk on their way to a fair are generally conspicuous for the smartness of their attire. The lasses wear their best gowns, and are gay with new ribbons bought for the occasion; the lads are iu their holiday clothes, with a bow or a flower adorning a breast button hole. But as regards the majority of those who are proceeding quick march to Hoandsditch, while the church bells are ringing, they are a dilapidated crew—seedy, shabby, out at elbowa, and many of them with a not better hat than that with which a scarecrow is commonly crowned, with boots so far gone in decay that their bodies and soles scare hold together.

It is from all this that the fair takes its name, it is known as Rag Fair, and it is here that the lower labouring class of the metropolis, as well as the tag-rag army, whose means of existence is a mystery, resort, not to renew their habiliments, but to effect such amendments as their means will admit. Less fortunate than the fowl of the air, they have no appointed season for moulting, neither does nature hold herself responsible for their re-feathering. It would be a great concession if the beneficient mother was, in this respect, as kind to the poorer order of her bipeds as she is to her birds! There would be no patched jackets then, no tattered skirts for poor souls to shiver in in the winter-time, or threadbare shawls to cover their thin shoulders. The lowest in the land would be assured, come tho proper time, of a new suit, were it only a modest garb, matching that which sparrows wear, As

at present arranged, new suits are rarely reckoned among their social privileges. It is a fact that may be worth mentioning as one of the curiosities of civilisation that, iu the richest city in the world, there are tens of thousands of industrious and hard-working poor fellows who never since they were promoted from baby petticoats to the dress that denotes the male have known what it is to call au entirely new suit of clothes their own. Secondhand is their only wear. Nay, they

hold themselves lucky if they sink no lower than that, and are not compelled to be content with garments that have seen

service with half a dozen wearers, each a shade poorer than the- last, until finally the shabby reversion falls to them, and they eke it out to the last clinging remnants. It is quito an important industry that ministers to the supply department at Rag Fair. In the surrounding streets, and in scores of dreadful courts and alleys and no thoroughfares that pierce the squalid narrow thoroughfares, reside a population—Polish and Russian Jews for the most part—that with their families subsist entirely on the trade of contriving boys' suits out of men's, f>o as to admit of all the damaged portions being eliminated, and iu piecing and patching and twisting and turning and dyeing and scouring old coats and waistcoats and trousers, and in re - stiffening and ironing old hats, and botching and cobbling old boots and shoes, and all for the Rag Fair

Sunday market, It will give some idea of the prodigious amount of business transacted there to state that in less than four hours on each succeeding Sabbath morning the great crowd of buyers clear off with the whole result of the labour of, at the very least, a thousand "trick tailors," as they are termed, as well as that of, say, half as many "translators" (converters of old boots and shoos into new ones), and hatters and cap-makers, and others whose conjurations are confined to " flannels" and under-linen and socks and stockings, every man of the fifteen hundred or so toiling fifteen or eveu eighteen hours a day, and seven days to the week.

Naturally, at this poiut, crops up the query, from whence is the immense quantity of raw, or rather doneto-death, material derived ? The question may be answered best possibly by asking another. What, respected reader, becomes of your own past wearing attire ? Being a man of wealth with a tailor to command, you may very properly reply that you know noMiing about such small matters. Having worn the bloom off an article of

apparel, you notify to vour valet that you shall not require it again, and after that it unfailingly disappears. But we are not all wealthy, or possessed of the modest income of even a thousand a yiar. Some of us contrive by careful contrivance to do with less than that, and assuming that a man's sole dependence is some three hundred per annum, and that he has a growing family to provide for. such extravagances as that above hiuted at are, of course, out of the question. A person so circumstanced may not be actually aware of what has become of that pair of boots in the upper leather of one of which a " crack '' developed, or of the coat that, after having faithfully served three "turns" as best, second best and lounge, vanished at last from its accustomed peg. It disappeared as many other of his wardrobe effects had done before, and he had not troubled himself to ask how. Had he felt curious, however, he would one morning, by peeping over the stairhead, have spied in the hall an individual of ravenish aspect, and whose bulky black bag reposed on the door mat. He has that very coat in his hands, and there is depreciation in his keen eyes as he " puts a price " on it. It is as well, perhaps, that he does not overhear the figure at which the article is valued, or that at which the boots with the crack in the side are appraised, and that he is ignorant of the very few shillings with which Mr Lazarus parts for the considerable heap of garments, large and small, which, with the air of a man who has done a profitless business, he thrusts into the sable receptacle. It is the " old clo" man who cheerfully responds to the insatiable demand for leftoff raiment. There is an " Exchange" at Rag Fair which is open every day to dealers only, and thither the laden collectors wend their way, and transfer their bagsful to merchants, who have diamond rings on their fingers, and bullion chains to their watches, massive enough to hold a watch-dog, and who wear silk-vei vet skull-caps, and everlastingly smoke cigars of the largest i size and the fullest flavour. But those engaged in the " old clo" trade are not all like Mr Lazarus. Many of them affect the humbler walks of commercial life. They do not pay in money for what they buy. Then carry with them an assortment of cheap china and "lass, and negotiate on the barter principle. Their dealings being mainly with working folk, the " cast-offs " ti.ey collect are, of course, correspondingly inferior. But it is all grist for the Hag Fair mill, and not so much as the odd boot, for which a wooden-legged customer has no further use, is laid aside as useless. And marvellous is the spectacle presented at Rag Fair when the Sunday morning is favoured by tine weather, and business is at full blast. The fair so called is not confined to one particular spot, nor, as far as may be judged, do its limits appear to be arbitrarily defined. There is a central space where the stalls are thickest, and seen, as 1 have seen it, from the roof of on? of the tall old houses, it seems as though this latter, like a foul reservoir, had overflowed its pestilent contents, in search of a level, invading every adjacent nook and crevice, some of the straggling streamlets extending through narrow channels as far almost as Whitechapel high street. Old clothes everywhere ! The odour arising from them poisonously affects the air, and imparts to it a strange flavour as of mouldy woollen rags saturated with mildew, and gridiioned over a slow lire to dry.combiued with the moist hartshorn and ammonia. Every wall and hoarding, every railing and window-sill and shutter, is festooned with articles of male or female apparel, the owners of which pre in attendance, clamorously beseeching customers, laying hands on the coat-tails and collars, and forcibly arresting any that seem half-resolved to stop and

inquire the price. The very knockers on the house-doors serve as convenient hasps on which to hang a few flannel petticoats, or a hunch of waistcoats and jackets and

trousers, pendant from out-thrust poles, appear at first-floor windows. Space for displaying 1 the goods on sale is the ore thing precious.nnd many are the ingenious devices resorted to by thn salesmen to promote business, a not uncommon one beiuir to utilise a Htout open umbrella

for the purpose, au array of small articles —stockings, neokscarfs, and cotton pocket handkerchiefs—all second-hand— beinsr piuued to the outer surface and hung from the interior lib.-'. But the 1110.1t usual way with those who avoid the expense of shops or btalls is for them to carry what they wish to dispose of slung across their shoulders, or hugged in their

(inns, find so laden, they somehow wriggle their way through the close packed crowd bawling the loudest. Looking down from a height, and hearing nothing distinctly, but only a fierce contention of voices, as though everybody was at deadly enmity and quarrelling with everybody else, it does not seem out of keeping with the strange scene that fights should frequently occur. They seem to pe preparing for it. In a dozen different places men are divesting themselves of jacket and waistcoat, and the next thing expected is a spariirig of fists and ferocious "set to." But nothing of the sort happens. The demonstrations mentioned merely denote a possible buyer "trying on" the garment ho is negotiating for. And so the crushing and crowding, and the uproar of haggling and huckstering, and the horse play, go on till the Church clocks chime for 1 o'clock, and then the police appear, and the ten or fifteen thousand, or whatever their number may be, clear out with their purchases, hurry home to dinner, and in an incredibly short space of time, save for the native population, the just now swarming streets and narrow ways are empty.