Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London LifeKirwan, Daniel Joseph
History
Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London Life
Kirwan, Daniel Joseph
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- Social life and customs
A number of missionaries have labored among them in vain for any great
result, chiefly dissenting clergymen, and, although they will listen to
them patiently enough, yet they look upon them as the representatives
of wealth and intelligence, and they cannot tell the difference between
a Wesleyan minister who holds forth on a Sunday morning, with a big
banner, calling upon them to repent, in the dark alleys of Bethnal
Green and Whitechapel, and the richly beneficed divine of the Church
of England who rolls by in a carriage, totally heedless of their
condition, bodily or spiritual. All men who wear white neck-cloths are
called parsons, and are disliked by the "costers." Besides, they have
not learned to read, and tracts are useless to them, were they willing
to study their contents.
The marriage relation is utterly ignored among them, and, if what
the police told me be true, not ten per cent. of the costermongers
who live with women and vend their goods in common are married. At
fifteen years of age the young costermonger leaves father and mother
to cleave to a girl of his own age, also the child of a costermonger,
bred in the gutters of the metropolis, and, having purchased a barrow
for ten shillings, and an ass for perhaps £2, the pair begin the world
practically man and wife, but without ever dreaming of calling in the
assistance of the minister to bind them together in the bonds of lawful
wedlock.
[Sidenote: HEATHENISM OF THE COSTERS.]
A marriage certificate in a costermonger's den would, indeed, be a
curious and unusual relic, as would also the marriage ring, which is
looked upon in civilized society as the seal and confirmation of the
wedding ceremony. They say that they cannot afford to pay a minister's
fee, and as their code of morals is beneath mention they do not see
the necessity of the expenditure. Their children grow up in the same
way, bred, as their parents have been, to hawk and cry from dawn until
darkness, and thus the costermongers increase, more savage in their
usages than the American aborigines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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