James Greenwood

“ They have nothing in the world but a pole with a home-made iron hook at the end of it, and a pickaxe, but in desperately willing hands those tools are sufficient to win a loaf with. They brake up the ice, the poleman and his mates; they smash it into convenient pieces, and with icicles dangling from the fringe of their ragged trousers, turned up higher than their knees, they plash and dabble in the deadly cold water to bring the ice ashore, and they help to pack it into the carts at a charge of fourpence per load. ”

“ But they are not all owners of quadrupeds, these ice-getters; very many have nothing but a barrow, on which, all the way there, Jack gives Bill a ride, on condition that Bill takes the shafts on the homeward journey with the load. It is still freezing hard, and the stars are twinkling in the cold sky, when the ponds are reached; it is not yet seven o'clock, but the troop of ice carters are not the first in the field.
Other poor fellows, poorer than themselves, are there before them - men who have neither horse nor barrow. ”

“ It is well worth the ice-carter's while to pay for this assistance. The sooner he is loaded the sooner he may be off to where the great well is gaping its insatiable jaws for more and still more, and where the well owner is waiting with the "bit o ready money," so precious in frosty days to the poor man with a family. It is very important to be in time with the first load. Unless a man is tolerably early at the "well," he may have to abide his turn for an hour and more ”

“ It is a saying amongst the busy poor of the great city, that there "are always crumbs for the London sparrows," or, in other words, that a man in health, though never so poor, may always find a loaf by diligent seeking ”