Clare FitzGerald

“ Most families have a large amount of what we designate as rubbish and lumber in the old dark cupboards and attics in their houses, and though our corks and hair-pins may not turn up in these local dust-heaps, many a trifle, of no value to ourselves, may be picked out and sent off to dress the mantel-piece and divert the listless sick woman and child in the dwellings of our London poor. ”

“ Money and food will pay the back rents and sustain the body, but how are they to clothe the poor little shivering children in winter, or in long sickness, when rags are pawned for the rent and food and firing, work being slack or at a stand-still for weeks together, and any means of livelihood precarious? ”

“ For my own part, I would rather deal with them than the country folk, though the work of a London district is far more difficult than that of a country parish. “Human nature is the same everywhere,” people will say, but there is much to combat with in our visiting; and when the fight is over, and the day’s work done, the reflection that a handful of good seed has been sown, and is likely to produce a good return, amply repays the toil and moil a visitor may be obliged to go through all the year round. The blessing of the poor is always desirable ”

“ Those who have visited much among the London poor must have often been disconcerted at their inability to reform and redress the sufferings of a family where there are a bad father and sickly mother, and several young children, all demanding, in both a bodily and spiritual sense, such relief as will preserve them from starvation. In our own parish we have a goodly band of district visitors, acting under the countenance and guidance of our clergy. ”

“ I am desirous of impressing upon those who feel willing to work in concert with others and myself, according to our simple plan, the necessity for this sort of needlework in many districts. Money and food tickets sustain the body, but don’t clothe the shivering infants. Mothers have no time to make clothes for their little ones; and poor parents, I may say, have generally large families. The little creatures wear out their clothes as fast as and faster than our own children do theirs. They require continual washing, mending, and making for. ”

“ There are invalids who are too feeble to maintain a livelihood by rough work, such as charing, washing, and ironing all day long. These sit at home and make up fancy articles, such as needle-books, pin-cushions, and pen-wipers, to sell in the streets or at the different shops and bazaars. I know one old widow afflicted with dropsy and a bad leg. The parish allows her one shilling and sixpence and a loaf per week. The one shilling and sixpence does not pay the rent of her tiny dark back room, which costs her two shillings weekly. ”

“ The larger part of the poor women in London get a living by charing and laundry work. The wages of the husband will not pay the six shillings rent for two rooms, and the schooling of two or three boys and girls, and “keep the wolf from the door” as well. The wife, then, must go out to work also. A mechanic, working for the shops in his own neighbourhood, or for those at the West End, makes from 18s. to 1l. per week; a labourer the same sum. This leaves but a small surplus for clothes, I assure you, if any at all, after the rent is paid and the food consumed at the end of the week. ”

“ I know that among us there are helpers for their miserable condition, such as City Missionaries, and a band of women whom we may find in every nook and corner of the earth, and who seek their happiness in rooting out sin and sorrow from among the lowest and most degraded classes of the London poor. Of these poor I know but very little. Occasionally a few of them come to settle in our district, and they are the curse of their more respectable neighbours. ”

“ The mother can fit herself out, and her husband too, at these shops; but they pay dear for the cheap article, as the children’s clothes are often filled with infection, and indeed must be. The poor in London live sometimes by pawning one thing after another, through a hard winter, or under stress of sickness. The clothes of the child just dead of typhus fever are taken to the pawnshop, and turned into money. A drunken wife or mother will take the blankets and sheets from her dead husband’s bed, and pawn them. ”

“ From all I have seen and the conversations I have held with our poor women, I have come to the conclusion that we can materially assist large families by a simple method, devised at little expense to us women, one which involves the clothing of these large families by one hour’s needlework in our own homes.
We have in most, if not in all, of our London parishes working committees once a week or once in a month; but there is a very large proportion of well-disposed girls and older persons among the higher classes who do not care to attend them. ”

“ We never choose Saturday for our visiting day, as we have some scruples in intruding on the general hard washing, hard slapping, and hard struggles for the mastery between the poor striving mother and her necessarily neglected children. What time has she, or what means have they, to make clothes for the babies? They are clean only once a week, and how do they clothe themselves, these London poor? my readers may ask. There are in very dirty streets and close thoroughfares small shops, called marine stores. ”

“ Say if flow'rets bloom to fade.
Nursed within your coral glade;
If the laughing rippling light
Sinks into crystal graves at night?
VI.
Earth to me is hard and bare,
Fair is false, and false is fair ”

“ I consider the tally-shops sources of vanity to any poor family, and I even prefer the pawn-shop and marine-store establishment to these tricky places of debit and credit. It has often astonished me how the very poorest part of our population manage to keep themselves in any description of clothing ”

“ Two travellers toiling, ever parted,
By a deathless love between;—
Two travellers toiling—broken-hearted—
Their work by each unseen.
II.
Two souls, whose star hath long been clouded,
Praying on separate shores ”

“ I know as a fact that most wives who are too delicate, or are unable for other reasons to go out to work, never eat meat themselves, and they and their children mainly subsist on bread and dripping, treacle-water, and tea. ”

“ On Saturday the mother usually stays at home if she have no big daughter “to do her house up,” and washes up everything in her two rooms—house, clothes, children, and herself poor thing,—in order that she and her family may be decent on Sunday, and start afresh to labour for their livelihood on Monday. ”

“ Give him a few of your old toys, and the small London pauper will want to play with neither carving-knife nor shovel, and will be cleaner and better tempered in his bed, as his visits to the dust-hole in quest of playthings will be no longer necessary. Pictures of sacred subjects are highly valued by the poor, and, as I have before observed, especially among the old women who cannot read. Some of our old women possess the most extraordinary executions of art anywhere to be seen. ”

“ Is it not within the range of probability that some day our missionary may find out a worthy itinerant who has discovered the colony of stray hair-pins, and is keeping herself in bonnets by her researches into our impenetrable mystery? ”

“ In these dens are men and women and children, viler than the animals they drive, where each day and night that rises and falls on their wretched existence is fraught with deeper and blacker crime and terror than in the times of Pagan darkness, before the light of Christianity was diffused throughout our island home. ”

“ They are not the sorry slaves of local prejudices and local interests, they are men and women of the earth alone, in the rough or smooth walks of existence, just according as they may chance to be placed. ”

“ New scraps of velvet, silk and cloth, ends of ribbon, spare beads, &c., such as many among us throw away as useless cuttings after we have completed some piece of fancy work, may be saved, with much advantage, for the use of our poor women and children. ”

“ I recommend you to work solely on childrens’ clothing, as these fag-ends will seldom serve for larger garments. Little hands, moreover, might become coarse and expand (which is not desirable) over rougher and larger work, like womens’ aprons and flannel petticoats. Those can be made at our Dorcas meetings, and sold or given away upon a regular organised system. The list and strips of flannel which you will find among these pieces make beautiful flannel petticoats, and I know that they last as long as those made out of a piece. ”

“ The poor are strangely fond of these toys, as also of rude pictures of sacred subjects. Pictures out of old books, cut out and pasted on a yard of holland, bound with tape, and rolled up and fastened with a button and buttonhole, will be a boon to many a poor child as well as mother. ”

“ The poor are grateful for benefits if rightly dealt out, and in London they are keenly susceptible of kindness shown them by their betters. But they are totally a different race of beings to the country poor. ”

“ I have been told by a good authority in the matter that newspaper stuffing is healthy, on account of printers’ ink being peculiarly wholesome. For my own part I should prefer a pillow or mattress made of one sort of paper, either all newspaper and printed forms, such as circulars and clean old book sheets, or letter paper. Your friends might tear up their letters which they do not wish to preserve, and contribute with advantage to your waste-paper basket. ”

“ This husband, perhaps, has died of small pox. A woman who goes to help at a gentleman’s house, after a dinner party, may be often rewarded for clandestine services to the cook by a faded stuff or cotton dress. ”

“ This I know to be the fare of a poor family who, out of 1l. 5s. per week, have 6s. 6d. rent to pay, and to support five young children. The poor man must eat one good meal of meat now and then in the week, as his health would decline for want of proper nourishment, and his work would flag wofully in consequence. On the return of the wives from the wash-tub or charing they have only time to wash their children and put them to bed. All day some of the children have been at the ragged or national schools ”

“ But she will not bear this in mind; she has been so long a time vague in her ideas respecting the identity of this plaster gentleman. The aged live in the past, the aged poor especially. The impressions of youth alone are ineffaceable. ”

“ I never see a stray cork in my path, but I think of that thrifty dust-rummager. What becomes of all the pins we drop out of our dresses, &c., might be a subject for speculation to ladies; and what can become of the hair-pins we lose out of our back-hair? ”

“ At these shops the poor spend more money than they can righteously afford. These shopmen take weekly payments. By the time the last three pence or sixpence is paid, the new dress has already a more than shabby appearance. ”

“ If you prefer a lining, it must be a loose one, of thin calico or holland, as it is difficult to wash patchwork counterpanes with a thick quilted lining, and I know the poor old women find them too heavy to wash when made up in this fashion. ”

“ The latter take the tone and opinions of their lords and masters, and live more narrowly, in a moral sense, than the Londoners, who depend for subsistence wholly upon the works of their own hands and the exercise of their own wits, amenable only to the bad or good luck of the times. ”

“ If you tell him you require them for a charitable purpose, he will doubtless put with them any small pieces of faded goods he may have that would be useless to any one else. Remnants of all sorts for little frocks and coloured petticoats can be purchased at a most reasonable price, wherever you may deal. ”

“ In many cases they serve to show the name of the manufacturer, or the number for future orders, or the quantity of yards in each piece, and though perfectly useless to the shopkeeper, will be of great service in making clothes for the poor. ”

“ In the patchwork which you buy you will find good-sized patterns of cotton print, many of them of the same size and cut evenly. These make up splendid counterpanes for old women. They should be neatly run together and the hems or edges herring-boned. ”