Pigs and Pigsties (continued)

I visited several cellars and wretched dwellings in the vicinity, inhabited by the Irish and the lowest class of English labourers, male and female, many of whom were engaged in the miserable occupation of unpicking old ropes, so as to prepare the oakum for being ground up again and wrought into shoddy, canvas and sacking. This special of labour is so unutterably wretched, that it can only exist as eking out the pittance procured by the industry of the principal supports of the family.

The first woman upon whom I lighted, and who professed to follow this miserable trade, I found ill in bed. It was indeed a squalid household the floor, dirty stone - the mean furniture scanty and broken - the smashed window panes stuffed with rags - and an emaciated woman, ghastly as death, lying shivering on a flock bed on the floor covered principally with a dress and a faded shawl.

She told me that she could earn just 4d by unpicking a stone of just ordinary ropes, and that she was too weak to pick more than three stone a week. The family lived principally on parish relief. She did not mean to say that a better hand than she was could not make more by opening ropes. She could not work at it longer than from eight o'clock in the morning until four o'clock in the afternoon. It was terribly dusty work. The house would be all covered with dust. The labour was awfully hard upon the fingers, particularly with the ropes were "green". For this kind of work however she was paid a penny a stone additional.

I was anxious to see the process actually going on, and presently I came upon a household in which, poor as were its physical attributes, the moral debasement and apathy which it disclosed were still more terrible.

In a bare, stone paved room, a principal part of the furniture of which consisted of tubs and apparatus for washing, sat three young children, cowering over a spark of fire, and slowly and painfully tearing rough ropes to pieces with their weak bony little fingers. An intelligent girl, about eight or nine years of age, seemed to have the control of the other children, who were younger and for whom she spoke, labouring away all the time. I ought to observe that I was accompanied by a relieving officer, and that the father of the family had been receiving parish relief for seven years.

'Where's your mother?'

'Gone out to try and get some washing to do'.

'Where's your father?'

'In the Fleece - that's a public house. Mother told him that he had better not go today, for you (to the relieving officer) would be very likely to come round; but he wouldn't stay'.

'What does your father do?

'Sweeps the streets sometimes'.

'But does he not help you pick these ropes?'

'No; he wouldn't do that. He makes us do that'.

'What do you get for picking?'

'Fourpence a stone but I give it all to my mother'.

'Do you go to school?'

'Only on Sundays. I must work you know. I can't read yet. But my little brother goes to school on week-days. Parson pays for him: only sometimes they keeps him at home to help in picking. He can't read either'.

'And is not the other little boy your brother?'

'Oh no! He only comes in to help us pick'.

'Do you like picking?'

'No, because it makes me poorly. The dust gets into my eyes and down my throat, and makes me cough. Sometimes too, it makes me sick. I can't keep at the work very long at a time, because of that'.

'You say you give all you earn to your mother?'

'Does she never let you have a penny for yourself?' The poor child hung down her head, hesitated and then stammered out, 'sometimes'.

'And what do you do with it?'

'I buys bread'.

In another house, very close to the last, I found three children left alone but in idleness. The place was a mess of filth; the scanty furniture broken, and flung carelessly about - the unmade bed a chaos of brown rags - cracked and handleless cups, smeared with coffee grounds, on the floor, amid umemptied slops and beside a large brown dish, full of fermenting dough, upon which dust and ashes were rapidly settling as it stood at the fireside. The uncleaned window and the dim light of a winter's afternoon made the place so dark that it was with difficulty I made out these details. There were here three little savages of children their hair tangled in filthy, clotted masses hanging over their grimy faces. Their clothes were mere bunches of rags, kept together by strings. A wriggle of their shoulders, and they would be free from all such incumbrances in a moment.

I asked them if they ever went to school?

'Never'

'Can you tell your letters?'

A mere solid stare of ignorance.

'How old are you?' I asked the eldest girl

'Don't know.'

'Do you know what is the Queen's name?'

'No'

'Where were you born'

'Don't know.'

The relieving officer said that he believed all the family were Irish.

'Did you ever hear of a place called Ireland?'

'No.'

'Or of a place called England?'

'No'

'Or of a place called Yorkshire?'

'No'

'Do you know the name of this town?'

After a pause, the question was answered. The eldest girl did know she lived in Leeds; and this knowledge, with the exception of matters belonging to the daily routine of existence, seemed positively to be the only piece of information in the possession of the family. . .

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