Another main cause is, that the Irish, as labourers, can seldom obtain work all the year through, and thus the ranks of the Irish street-sellers are recruited every winter by the slackness of certain periodic trades in which they are largely employed--such as hodmen, dock-work, excavating, and the like. They are, therefore, driven by want of employment to the winter sale of oranges and nuts. These circumstances have a doubly malefic effect, as the increase of costers accrues in the winter months, and there are consequently the most sellers when there are the fewest buyers.
Moreover, the cessation of work in the construction of railways, compared with the abundance of employment which attracted so many to this country during the railway mania, has been another fertile cause of there being so many Irish in the London streets.
The prevalence of Irish women and children among street-sellers is easily accounted for--they are, as I said before, unable to do anything else to eke out the means of their husbands or parents. A needle is as useless in their fingers as a pen.
Bitterly as many of these people suffer in this country, grievous and often eloquent as are their statements, I met with _none_ who did not manifest repugnance at the suggestion of a return to Ireland. If asked why they objected to return, the response was usually in the form of a question: “Shure thin, sir, and what good could I do there?” Neither can I say that I heard any of these people express any love for their country, though they often spoke with great affection of their friends.
From an Irish costermonger, a middle-aged man, with a physiognomy best known as “Irish,” and dressed in corduroy trousers, with a loose great-coat, far too big for him, buttoned about him, I had the following statement:
“I had a bit o’ land, yer honor, in County Limerick. Well, it wasn’t just a farrum, nor what ye would call a garden here, but my father lived and died on it--glory be to God!--and brought up me and my sister on it. It was about an acre, and the taties was well known to be good. But the sore times came, and the taties was afflicted, and the wife and me--I have no childer--hadn’t a bite nor a sup, but wather to live on, and an igg or two. I filt the famine a-comin’. I saw people a-feedin’ on the wild green things, and as I had not such a bad take, I got Mr. ---- (he was the head master’s agent) to give me 28_s._ for possission in quietness, and I sould some poulthry I had--their iggs was a blessin’ to keep the life in us--I sould them in Limerick for 3_s._ 3_d._--the poor things--four of them. The furnithur’ I sould to the nabors, for somehow about 6_s._ Its the thruth I’m ay-tellin’ of you, sir, and there’s 2_s._ owin’ of it still, and will be a perpitual loss. The wife and me walked to Dublin, though we had betther have gone by the ‘long say,’ but I didn’t understand it thin, and we got to Liverpool. Then sorrow’s the taste of worruk could I git, beyant oncte 3_s._ for two days harrud porthering, that broke my back half in two. I was tould I’d do betther in London, and so, glory be to God! I have--perhaps I have. I knew Mr. ----, he porthers at Covent-garden, and I made him out, and hilped him in any long distance of a job. As I’d been used to farrumin’ I thought it good raison I should be a costermonger, as they call it here. I can read and write too. And some good Christian--the heavens light him to glory when he’s gone!--I don’t know who he was--advanced me 10_s._--or he gave it me, so to spake, through Father ----,” (a Roman Catholic priest.) “We earrun what keeps the life in us. I don’t go to markit, but buy of a fair dealin’ man--so I count him--though he’s harrud sometimes. I can’t till how many Irishmen is in the thrade. There’s many has been brought down to it by the famin’ and the changes. I don’t go much among the English street-dalers. They talk like haythens. I never miss mass on a Sunday, and they don’t know what the blissed mass manes. I’m almost glad I have no childer, to see how they’re raired here. Indeed, sir, they’re not raired at all--they run wild. They haven’t the fear of God or the saints. They’d hang a praste--glory be to God! they would.”