“There’s nob’dy but the Lord an’ me
That knows what I’ve to bide.”
 Natterin Nan.

The slipshod old tailor shuffled after us to the door, talking about the signs of the times. His frame was bowed with age and labour, and his shoulders drooped away. It was drawing near the time when the grasshopper would be a burden to him. A hard life had silently engraved its faithful records upon that furrowed face; but there was a cheerful ring in his voice which told of a hopeful spirit within him still. The old man’s nostrils were dusty with snuff, and his poor garments hung about his shrunken form in the careless ease which is common to the tailor’s shopboard. I could not help admiring the brave old wrinkled workman as he stood in the doorway talking about his secondhand trade, whilst the gusty wind fondled about in his thin gray hair. I took a friendly pinch from his little wooden box at parting, and left him to go on struggling with his troublesome family to “keep above the flood,” by translating old clothes into new. We called at some other houses, where the features of life were so much the same that it is not necessary to say more than that the inhabitants were all workless, or nearly so, and all living upon the charitable provision which is the only thin plank between so many people and death, just now. In one house, where the furniture had been sold, the poor souls had brought a great stone into the place, and this was their only seat. In Cunliffe Street, we passed the cottage of a boilermaker, whom I had heard of before. His family was four in number. This was one of those cases of wholesome pride in which the family had struggled with extreme penury, seeking for work in vain, but never asking for charity, until their own poor neighbours were at last so moved with pity for their condition, that they drew the attention of the Relief Committee to it. The man accepted relief for one week, but after that, he declined receiving it any longer, because he had met with a promise of employment. But the promise failed him when the time came. The employer, who had promised, was himself disappointed of the expected work. After this; the boilermaker’s family was compelled to fall back upon the Relief Committee’s allowance. He who has never gone hungry about the world, with a strong love of independence in his heart, seeking eagerly for work from day to day, and coming home night after night to a foodless, fireless house, and a starving family, disappointed and desponding, with the gloom of destitution deepening around him, can never fully realise what the feelings of such a man may be from anything that mere words can tell.

In Park Road, we called at the house of a hand-loom weaver. I learnt, before we went in, that two families lived here, numbering together eight persons; and, though it was well known to the committee that they had suffered as severely as any on the relief list, yet their sufferings had been increased by the anonymous slanders of some ill-disposed neighbours. They were quiet, well-conducted working people; and these slanders had grieved them very much. I found the poor weavers wife very sensitive on this subject. Mans inhumanity to man may be found among the poor sometimes. It is not every one who suffers that learns mercy from that suffering. As I have said before, the husband was a calico weaver on the hand-loom. He had to weave about seventy-three yards of a kind of check for 3s., and a full weeks work rarely brought him more than 5s. It seems astonishing that a man should stick year after year to such labour as this. But there is a strong adhesiveness, mingled with timidity, in some men, which helps to keep them down. In the front room of the cottage there was not a single article of furniture left, so far as I can remember. The weavers wife was in the little kitchen, and, knowing the gentleman who was with me, she invited us forward. She was a wan woman, with sunken eyes, and she was not much under fifty years of age. Her scanty clothing was whole and clean. She must have been a very good-looking woman sometime, though she seemed to me as if long years of hard work and poor diet had sapped the foundations of her constitution; and there was a curious changeful blending of pallor and feverish flush upon that worn face. But, even in the physical ruins of her countenance, a pleasing expression lingered still. She was timid and quiet in her manner at first, as if wondering what we had come for; but she asked me to sit down. There was no seat for my friend, and he stood leaning against the wall, trying to get her into easy conversation. The little kitchen looked so cheerless and bare that dull morning that it reminded me again of a passage in that rude, racy song of the Lancashire weaver, Jone o Greenfeelt

“Owd Bill o’ Dan’s sent us th’ baillies one day,
For a shop-score aw owed him, at aw couldn’t pay;
But, he were too lat, for owd Billy at th’ Bent
Had sent th tit an cart, an taen th goods off for rent,
They laft nought but th’ owd stoo;
It were seats for us two,
An’ on it keawr’t Margit an’ me.

“Then, th’ baillies looked reawnd ’em as sly as a meawse,
When they see’d at o’th goods had bin taen eawt o’ th’ heawse;
Says tone chap to tother, ’O’s gone, thae may see,
Says aw, ‘Lads, ne’er fret, for yo’re welcome to me!’
Then they made no moor do,
But nipt up wi’ owd stoo,
An’ we both letten thwack upo’ th’ flags.

“Then aw said to eawr Margit, while we’re upo’ the floor,
‘We’s never be lower i’ this world, aw’m sure;
Iv ever things awtern they’re likely to mend,
For aw think i’ my heart that we’re both at th’ fur end;
For meight we ban noan,
Nor no looms to weighve on,
An’ egad, they’re as good lost as fund.’”

We had something to do to get the weaver’s wife to talk to us freely, and I believe the reason was, that, after the slanders they had been subject to, she harboured a sensitive fear lest anything like doubt should be cast upon her story. “Well, Mrs,” said my friend, “let’s see; how many are you altogether in this house?” “We’re two families, yo know,” replied she; “there’s eight on us all altogether.” “Well,” continued he,"and how much have you coming in, now?” He had asked this question so oft before, and had so often received the same answer, that the poor soul began to wonder what was the meaning of it all. She looked at us silently, her wan face flushed, and then, with tears rising in her eyes, she said, tremulously, “Well, iv yo’ cannot believe folk ” My friend stopped her at once, and said, “Nay, Mrs, you must not think that I doubt your story. I know all about it; but my friend wanted me to let you tell it your own way. We have come here to do you good, if possible, and no harm. You don’t need to fear that.” “Oh, well,” said she, slowly wiping her moist forehead, and looking relieved,” but yo know, aw was very much put about o’er th’ ill-natur’t talk as somebody set eawt.” “Take no notice of them,” said my friend; “take no notice. I meet with such things every day.” “Well,” continued she,” yo know heaw we’re situated. We were nine months an’ hesn’t a stroke o’ wark. Eawr wenches are gettin’ a day for t’ sick, neaw and then, but that’s all. There’s a brother o’ mine lives with us, he’d a been clemmed into th’ grave but for th’ relief; an’ aw’ve been many a time an’ hesn’t put a bit i’ my meawth fro mornin’ to mornin’ again. We’ve bin married twenty-four year; an’ aw don’t think at him an’ me together has spent a shillin’ i’ drink all that time. Why, to tell yo truth, we never had nought to stir on. My husband does bod get varrà little upo th’ hand-loom i’ th’ best o’ times 5s. a week or so. He weighves a sort o’ check seventy-three yards for 3s.” The back door opened into a little damp yard, hemmed in by brick walls. Over in the next yard we could see a man bustling about, and singing in a loud voice, “Hard times come again no more.” “Yon fellow doesn’t care much about th’ hard times, I think,” said I. “Eh, naw,” replied she. “He’ll live where mony a one would dee, will yon. He has that little shop, next dur; an’ he keeps sellin’ a bit o’ toffy, an’ then singin’ a bit, an’ then sellin’ a bit moor toffy, an’ he’s as happy as a pig amung slutch.”

Leaving the weaver’s cottage, the rain came on, and we sat a few minutes with a young shoemaker, who was busy at his bench, doing a cobbling job. His wife was lying ill upstairs. He had been so short of work for some time past that he had been compelled to apply for relief. He complained that the cheap gutta percha shoes were hurting his trade. He said a pair of men’s gutta percha shoes could be bought for 5d., whilst it would cost him 7d. for the materials alone to make a pair of men’s shoes of. When the rain was over, we left his house, and as we went along I saw in a cottage window a printed paper containing these words, “Bitter beer. This beer is made of herbs and roots of the native country.” I know that there are many poor people yet in Lancashire who use decoctions of herbs instead of tea mint and balm are the favourite herbs for this purpose; but I could not imagine what this herb beer could be, at a halfpenny a bottle, unless it was made of nettles. At the cottage door there was about four-pennyworth of mauled garden stuff upon an old tray. There was nobody inside but a little ragged lass, who could not tell us what the beer was made of. She had only one drinking glass in the place, and that had a snip out of the rim. The beer was exceedingly bitter. We drank as we could, and then went into Pump Street, to the house of a “core-maker,” a kind of labourer for moulders. The core-maker’s wife was in. They had four children. The whole six had lived for thirteen weeks on 3d. a week. When work first began to fall off, the husband told the visitors who came to inquire into their condition, that he had a little money saved up, and he could manage a while. The family lived upon their savings as long as they lasted, and then were compelled to apply for relief, or “clem.” It was not quite noon when we left this house, and my friend proposed that before we went farther we should call upon Mrs G, an interesting old woman, in Cunliffe Street. We turned back to the place, and there we found

“In lowly shed, and mean attire,
A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name,
Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame.”

In a small room fronting the street, the mild old woman sat, with her bed in one corner, and her simple vassals ranged upon the forms around. Here, with quaint arts, she swayed the giddy crowd of little imprisoned elves, whilst they fretted away their irksome schooltime, and unconsciously played their innocent prelude to the serious drama of life. As we approach the open door

“The noises intermix’d, which thence resound,
Do learning’s little tenement betray;
Where sits the dame disguised in look profound,
And eyes her fairy throng, and turns her wheel around.”

The venerable little woman had lived in this house fourteen years. She was seventy-three years of age, and a native of Limerick. She was educated at St Ann’s School, in Dublin, and she had lived fourteen years in the service of a lady in that city. The old dame made an effort to raise her feeble form when we entered, and she received us as courteously as the finest lady in the land could have done. She told us that she charged only a penny a-week for her teaching; but, said she, “some of them can’t pay it.” “There’s a poor child,” continued she, “his father has been out of work eleven months, and they are starving but for the relief. Still, I do get a little, and I like to have the children about me. Oh, my case is not the worst, I know. I have people lodging in the house who are not so well off as me. I have three families living here. One is a family of four; they have only 3s. a-week to live upon. Another is a family of three; they have 6s. a-week from a club, but they pay me 2s. a-week. for rent out of that. . . . . I am very much troubled with my eyes; my sight is failing fast. If I drop a stitch when I’m knitting, I can’t see to take it up again. If I could buy a pair of spectacles, they would help me a good dale; but I cannot afford till times are better.” I could not help thinking how many kind souls there are in the world who would be glad to give the old woman a pair of spectacles, if they knew her.