" FARDENS-WORTHS."

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2769, 12 April 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

" FARDENS-WORTHS."

A VISIT TO A FARTHING SHOP IN WHITECHAPEL. Thk window was garnished with a basket of dirty eggs mixed with discoloured chunks of bacon, and sweets, and bread, an article like saveloy run to seed, and the many odds and ends one sees in a 1 farthing shop.' The farthing-shop is in Dorset-street, a locality made unsavoury by one of the Whitechapel murderer's feats, It was nearly eleven o'olock in the morning, and yet on one of the doorsteps two men and a woman were sleeping off a potation. A gang of impudent-looking young men stood at one corner; they were pointed out as a set of thac wretched unnaraeable tribe who live on women's shame. Babies crawl about on all fours in the filth and garbage; sluttish women sit on doorsteps. This (writes a representative) is the neighbourhood of the farden shop.' Tho tadpoles on Hampstead Heath formed an interesting study for the fine and ripe intellect of a Pickwick. Would that some statistician could engage himself and interest the world by the study of ' Whero do the farthings go P' We miss them so after the limited finance of school days. A good many of them get to Whitechapel, to this shop in Dorsetstreet. Among a lot of diminutive packages of soap and tea and sugar, and ha'porths of bacon, there was a saucer of farthings. I went into the ill-lighted emporium, aud a very intelligent young woman who was serving told me that they sold nearly everything in quantities of farthing's worths. ' You oan have a farthing's worth of tea, and sugar, and soap, and butter and milk. We don't sell less than a hap'orth of loaf sugar though.' On the counter a baby was crowing, and at the time people were streaming in for their farthing's-worths. Cooked bacon is sold at a shilling a pound, and ' rore bacon,' said tho young woman, at sevenpence. At night the place is a sort of supper club, the members of which all fetch their own provisions from threehalfpenne upwards Bang wont a dirty tin on the counter, aud an unkempt child wanted a fartbing'sworth of milk. She put her unclean little nose into it as she walked out. Then a man came in, and after much haggling to have the cheapest lie contracted for seven farthings'-worth of bacon. He was a lean and hungry man, long of limb. Then a woman for a farthiugs'-worth of milk and the same of butter. They evidently breakfast late in Dorset-street. This customer also had a ha'porth of " picallilli," a peculiar pickle in which it is not possible to distinguish anything but mustard, but it looks chiefly like cauliflower. Two or three times while I was there the shop filled and emptied, and nearly all the business was done in farthings. Ono little boy had a ha'porth of tea-dust. The shop opens at six in tho mornin? and closes at twelve or half-past at night. This is the only way that any profit can be got from such poor cuitomers. Then there are all the packets to be made up ready for customers before the place opens. This is probably the dearest and the meanest mode of housekeeping anywhere. The people who live in the streets are the dregs of Whitechapel. Some of them are dockers, hut they aro the fringe of tho wor-t a-riong the casual labourers. It explains somewhat how these men who live from hand to mouth can hold out so long. If they got a penny from the relief fund there is sufficient to buy a tea with. With another penny for bread and a penny tor coals— for threepence, in fact—the larder is filled, and a cheerful glow permeates the one roo-n that is usually the residence of tlioso who don't live in the common lodging-houses.