CHAPTER VIII. PETTICOAT-LANE AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD.
THE "Vision of Peace," -such is
the signification of the word Jerusalem; and a very visionary affair peace must
have been in any city with a like excitable and restless population. Have you
ever striven to realise to yourself, O gentle reader, a Hebrew mob?-to bring
before you, as it were, those myriad eyes, flashing with anger, dilating with
wonder, or sparkling with mirth !-the forest of beards, long and short, shaggy
and sleek, waving to and fro, up and down, keeping time to the wagging of those
many tongues? You have striven to do this, but failing, have given up the hope
in despair. You were wrong; come with us, and together we will visit
Petticoat-lane.
Petticoat-lane?
Yes, the modern Jerusalem, as it is frequently called; a
title singularly inappropriate, for of peace in its confines there is literally
none. The Modern Babel would be better, a confusion of tongues being apparent
enough; the Hebrew element, as ever in this quarter, predominating. The Lane is
thronged-a perfect sea of greasy bargainers blocking up the thoroughfare ; a sea
redolent of oil, which, however, has failed to smooth its troubled waters-waters
which, like those of the Red Sea before the chariot of Pharaoh, separate only as
some huge wagon or loaded cart comes heavily down the Lane -heavily and slowly-
like some Juggernaut-car, threatening destruction to all who would impede its
progress. Juggernaut line scarcely passed before the waves roll in again, and
the tumult and tempest of voices recommence with a vigour and perseverance that
throw Babel at once into the shade, and set even deafness at defiance.
Petticoat-lane is long, narrow, and filthy,-a lane with many turnings. Let us
beg our readers to glance down Hebrew-place, and retreat immediately-the look
being enough; into Tripe-yard, and many others of equally euphonius title.,-the
same mouldy, musty smell is about them all; the odour of the old clothes-man's
bag seems to pervade the place. Petticoat-lane has no duplicate in London,
though it has numerous parallels abroad. In filthiness it is surpassed by the
Ghetto (the Jewish quarter in Rome), and by many of those tortuous thoroughfares
in which daring travellers are lost, when wandering about the venerable and half
Jewish cities of Hamburgh and Frankfort.
The first thing that strikes you, when you have recovered
your senses sufficiently to think of anything but the confusion that reigns
around, is the appearance of the shops; the next, the dingy, second-hand look
which everything wears, and the strange and all-powerful smell of old clothes
and ancient shoeleather before alluded to, which impregnates the atmosphere, and
gives a kind of character to the place. Here are brokers of all kinds-dealers in
everything! hat-shops, boot- shops, fried-fish-shops, butcher's-shops,
public-houses-with Hebrew Bonifaces, uncleanly to look upon, lazily lounging at
their doors - coffee-shops in plenty, and a-no! yes! pork-shop- a pork-sausage
shop in Petticoat-lane! What! will Levi, will Lazarus - names of weight - permit
this profanation - this scandal upon the sacred ground-this interloper in the
City of Refuge for their persecuted race? We look anxiously to the right and
left, expecting to see horror and abhorrence written on every face; expect-but
are disappointed. For the Jewish mind is acute; and, knowing the composition of
London sausages, passes the shop with a smile.
The Hebrew quarter - truly so. Turn which way we will, the
same physiognomy, with its unmistakable indications, meets our gaze; the same
keen eyes look sharply upon us, speculating upon our probable wants, eager to
make a deal; the same persuasive tongue warbles the praises of his or her wares.
And dangerous indeed are the dark-eyed Syrens of the Lane, as singing sweetly in
his ears, they tempt the traveller within the Charybdis of their doors, and ruin
him with costly "pargains."
We pause for a moment, incautiously standing in front of a
shop. It is enough. A dozen pair of eyes - for, like the vulture, they see their
prey from afar - are upon us; we must want something. We are assailed upon all
sides, and, bewildered by many voices, give ourselves up to despair. On one side
a child of Moses, with a portentous squint and a dirty face, the "badge of
all his tribe," presents an old blunderbuss at our head, and solicits its
immediate purchase. We think of the truculent beggar who demanded charity of Gil
Blas with a musket resting on his tattered hat, and hastily turn aside: turn
aside to be seized upon by another of the tribe,-a Judas Maccabaeus, fierce in
aspect, loud of tongue. He has large eyes and astonished eyelashes, a shock head
of hair, and long ragged beard, like badly-prepared tobacco, from which the
snuff is shaken in clouds, as if to give greater force to the simile.
Maccabaeus, which signifies "he who fights,"
clutches at us like the bird of prey he is, and insists upon our becoming the
owner of a large sea-chest and folding tent, which he has to sell, and which
will be just the things for Australia. Another directs our attention to a cold,
shiny-looking couch, hard and angular, like a dowager, in faded chintz, and
three high-backed chairs, with weak legs and spinal complaints, like the same
dowager's vinegar-visaged daughters ; when a neighbour, darting suddenly from a
chaos of a shop in our rear, possesses himself of our coat-tails, while he yells
into our ears the praises of an eight-day clock, that not only tells the time of
day, but employs two figures to strike the hours; and various other articles of
an equally ingenous construction.
We make an effort to proceed, when our path is blocked up by
a Hebrew youth, who, bowing gracefully, produces a dilapidated concertina, and
fills the air with such horrid and discordant sounds that we hurriedly become
its purchaser, as the speediest and safest means of escaping the annoyance.
A weak-minded man should never attempt the passage of
Petticoat-lane excepting under good and sufficient guidance. The dangers of the
North-west Passage are but trifles to those which encompass you here. A friend
of ours - a man of easy nature and much excellence of heart - once lost himself
in the intricacies of the Lane, when attempting a short cut from Spitalfields to
Whitechapel. He emerged at last, however, the fortunate possessor of a four-post
bedstead without a top, a pigeon-house without a bottom, several second-hand
boots (odd ones), a filter without a tap, a basket of carpenter's tools) a
stuffed parrot, and three flat-irons.
Again we pause, as the voice of temptation meets our ears.
The voice is soft; the tones subdued, as though its owner were overwhelmed with
the greatness of his subject. There is music in those lisping accents, as it
bids us turn and speak. What! can this be the author of that Hebrew melody
?-this withered mummy, with toothless gums, and nose and chin in dangerous
propinquity? A pair of dark rimmed spectacles sits astride of a nose which
stands boldly out, like the prow of a Roman galley; and a dirty nightcap, of
uncertain colour, is pulled over a perfect conflagration of red hair. With one
fleshless finger the Horror beckons us. We would fain retreat, but "he
holds us with his glittering eye," and "we cannot choose but
hear." He catches us by the sleeve, draws us within his doorway, and
whispers the word "Cigars"-"direct from the Avannah." My
dear, vouldn't deceive you for the vorld. Got a friend as ships em."
"Grows them." Abraham, "grows them." The Minories are near
at hand, and lettuce leaves are cheap; your cigars are brown, and youth is
green. So the Havannah supply never fails in Petticoat-lane, where trade goes
briskly on.
As we turn our backs upon the spectre, who we leave shaking
the elf-locks which hang flaming about his parchment visage, our notice is
attracted to a face of a different caste, -a countenance glorious to look
upon,-a head wild and noble, such as the shepherd prophet Amos might have borne
upon his shoulders; and when we look at the large eye beautiful in its liquid
brightness, the dark hair, and beard loosely flowing, we are reminded of those
heroes of the Bible, half-madmen, all poets, who drank in inspiration from the
wilderness around them, and from the stars that shone down upon them, as they
sat tending their flocks. Men undaunted, standing erect in the presence of their
kings, denouncing vice and prophesying ruin. We are reminded of all this as we
gaze upon the head before us; but, alas! the owner looks up, speaks, and the
spell has vanished. He is busily engaged picking to pieces the silk of some old
umbrellas, to "make his vife a dress," as a passing Israelite jocosely
remarks.
Among the groups that now crowd the Lane, several figures
arrest our attention, both from peculiarity of aspect and strangeness of
apparel. This old man, with a face of a bilious-golden hue, with a cunning eye
and restless avaricious mouth, as though thirsting for the Croesus drink of
gold, is clad in a dingy robe, fastened round the waist by a twisted shawl. He
is a pearl-merchant, from Ceylon, and walks slowly along, combing a beard
of saffron hue, with nails that curve inwards like the talons of an eagle. He
pauses only to haggle with a boy for one of those sticky and unpleasant-looking
cakes, which he carries in a tray before him, and which seem manufactured only
for the purpose of catching vagrant flies. Here, also, are merchants from Smyrna
and Constantinople, dealers from Hamburgh, Frankfort, and a host of towns
beside; two Russian Jews from Siberia, and one shrivelled little monkey-faced
Hebrew from Morocco. They are speaking in languages of all kinds; but to us,
whose acquirements are limited in that respect, their gestures are more eloquent
than words ; and we look with wonder upon men who have travelled from all
corners of the earth to trade, and trade in Petticoat-lane.
Let us pass down Harrow-alley, leading to the City Clothes
Exchange, - that great emporium, of which more anon, when we speak of the links
which connect Petticoat-lane with the WILD TRIBES OF LONDON. Harrow-alley is the
Lane over again-smaller, and, if possible, dirtier than her neighbour.
Bestriding the path, like a greasy Colossus, leaning against the wall, or
squatting in the mud, are men and women by the score. Beside, behind, and before
them, are spread out their miscellaneous wares, to which they supplicate your
notice or imperatively demand your attention. Here is a man, selling female
apparel, and dilating upon the qualities of a faded silk; there a Jewess, with a
face imagination would bestow upon the Witch of Endor, sitting coiled up amid a
pile of old iron, expatiating upon the excellence of a hand-saw and jack-plane,
which a semi-drunken carpenter is dreamily investigating, and making a hopeless
endeavour to cheapen. The curb is covered with women's boots, looking jauntily
enough, while myriads of Wellingtons and ankle-jacks; of clumsy make and ancient
date, are very properly deposited in the kennel.
The various public-houses in Petticoat-lane, Harrow-alley,
and elsewhere, are generally crammed to excess. Through the open doorways we
look into the back rooms, where some dozen men are always smoking,-their faces
lost in the clouds of smoke which emanate from their lips. These men are known
to the initiated as Petticoat-lane fencers, or receivers of stolen goods.
Patiently they sit in these filthy rooms, waiting news from their scouts, who
they throw out as antennae to "feel the way;" or for the appearance of
the thief's confederate, who "gives the office," and tells where the
booty may be found. The Jew asks no questions, makes his "pargain,"
and in a few hours the articles themselves have ceased to exist -or, rather,
have been born again in a form that their original fashioner would refuse to own
them.
Watts Phillips, The Wild Tribes of London, 1855
see also James Grant in Light and Shadows of London Life - click heresee also Henry Mayhew in The Criminal Prisons of London - click here
see also James Greenwood in Low-Life Deeps - click here
Victorian London - Publications - Social Investigation/Journalism - Life in the London Streets, by Richard Rowe, 1881 - Chapter 11 - Sunday Morning in Petticoat Lane[-back to main for this book-]
[-170-]
SUNDAY MORNING IN PETTICOAT LANE
In the core of the City, on a Sunday morning, there are
streets as silent as sepulchres. When you disturb their bush with your echoing
footfall, you do not see another human being, except, perhaps, some weary
watchman or housekeeper looking down with lack-lustre eyes on the bare pavement
of the deserted close-shuttered thoroughfares, or into a disused churchless
churchyard, walled in, like the bottom of a well, with towering warehouses.
It is startling to cross from that drowsy calm into the
brawling bustle of the Aldgate and Whitechapel Jews' quarter.
In and about Houndsditch shops are open and watchmakers at
work, heedless of the chaff upon their screwed-up eyes shouted in at them by
filthy young roughs hanging before their windows. Every now and then some one
passes with a garment or hat in his hand, or a clothes-bag on his back. Phil's
Buildings and Cutler Street are choked with buyers and sellers of old
clothes-male and female, pouring in and out of the old-clothes exchanges like
very dirty bees at the entrances of very dingy hives. The atmosphere of those
densely-thronged marts does not remind one of "spicy breezes [-171-] blowing soft
from Ceylon's isle "-it is redolent of oleaginous malodours, of a general
dusty musty, fustiness. And yet what energetic bargaining is going on over the
old garments! Though some of them look fit for little else than scarecrows, how
voices are raised to sea- bird screeches, what elegancies of very composite
English-Cockneyese plus Irish brogue, Jewish enunciation, and a splutter
of foreign gutturals - are exchanged, how arms are pump-handled and fists are
clenched, in the transfer of these fallen leaves of use and fashion. Some of the
chatterers look very much as if they were going to fight. Hard by in their
Meeting House the Friends are sitting, silent as sleek uncooing doves. London is
rich in contrasts. By the bye, do Quaker hats, coats, and breeches ever
find their way into Rag Fair? And if so, who buys them to wear again?
On the other side of Houndsditch street-sellers are coming
with their baskets and their harrows from the fruit market in Duke's Place and
Mitre Street. The busiest of the marketing is over· in front of one of the
unglazed stores stands a chaise with a white pony, which gleams like moonlight,
and a scarlet-lined rug which glows like fire, from their contrast to the
dinginess of the sloppy rubbish-littered square, on which the gloomy, grimy
Synagogue frowns down. The chaise is waiting, I suppose, to carry the
storekeeper, with his portly gold-[-172-]chained mother in Israel and black-eyed little
children of Israel into the country, but most of his fellow-tradesmen and their
wives linger in somewhat slovenly undress, as if they expected to do a good bit
of business yet in their papered pale-golden lemons, their brown walnuts, and
Brazil nuts, their shaggy-haired cocoa-nuts, and rocky lumps of conglomerated
dates. Some flashily dressed young fellows stand talking before the Jew
public-houses. Their talk is of business - no mere time, and therefore
money-wasting chaff. Indeed everybody in this part of the world seems to want to
make a deal of some kind. "Vat do you think of it. Mosshy?" shouts
a woman to her husband, who is leaning with his back against the wall on the
other side of the street. Mrs. Mosshy has been redeeming a spare five minutes in
bargaining for something she had not the slightest intention of buying before
the would. be vendor chanced to pass her way, and wishes for time marital
approval of her proposed investment.
But Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning will give the most vivid
idea of the greed of gain, or the hard struggle to make a living, there is in
the neighbourhood I am writing about.
Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning is a very striking but by no
means beautiful sight. It is not the place an Englishman proud of his country
would take a foreigner to see, unless [-173-] he were simply proud of his countrymen's
business energy. Cramped Middlesex Street is then crammed with, for the most
part, a very frowsy throng. When two persons with clean faces and in moderately
decent clothes meet there, they give one another an astonished stare. The one or
two burly policemen who stand at corners - black breakwaters in the struggling
tides that flow from Whitechape1 to Bishopsgate Street, and vice versa - look
sulky when. a "respectably dressed" person passes them.
"What on earth brings you here, to increase our bother?
they seem to say. "Perhaps you'll get into a scrimmage, and then what can
we do for you, or you do for yourself?"
On. the whole, however, the Sunday crowds sidle, with their
arms down, through the Lane without breach of the peace, and with a general
display of rough good-nature; though now anti then a sturdy, stubbly-chinned
denizen of the locality scowls on the "respectable intruder" in
it as if he would like to pitch into him for his impertinence. Stunted squalor,
however, rather than sturdiness, is the general characteristic of those with
whom you most literally rub shoulders in Petticoat Lane. Those who object to
contact with the Great Unwashed should give it a wide berth; otherwise they will
feel inclined, like Mr. Pendennis in his dandy days, to take a perfumed bath.
Little [-174-] children, however, manage to get through the crowd without being crunched
like snails. or course horseplay goes on. A favourite joke, when a jam occurs,
is to seize one of the street-sellers' barrows which still further block the
very narrow street, and drive it like a ploughshare with a wild " Hi ! Hi !
Hi!" through the obstructing crowd. When these crushes take place, the
explorer of the Lane must not be astonished if he should be cannoned through the
open doorway or window of a shop, or find a sticky seat on a confectionery
barrow. The way in which both street-sellers and shopkeepers expose their goods
in a place in which, if an organised dash were made at them, it seems as if it
would be impossible for the owners to preserve them from plunder or wanton
mischief, is one of the curiosities of London life.
The barrows are freighted with the usual eatables and
drinkables, flimsy toys and flimsier gimcracks of East- End al fresco trade.
The specialties of the Oriental-looking open-fronted shops are fried fish ,
greasy-looking tarts and cakes, little tubs of cucumbers pickled in piccalilli
mixture, second-hand tools, and all kinds of second-hand integuments for man,
woman, and child. There are swaying lianas of hats and caps, ranks of
"restored" boots, piles of gaily-coloured handkerchiefs - some,
perchance, in Pistol's sense, " conveyed "- and, groves of dusky
garments in which, here [-175-] and there, a footman's old livery, a soldier's stained
coat, or a faded silk or satin gown shines faintly like a dust-dimmed
king-parrot, ibis, or macaw.
Rusty, dusty, cobwebby old metal lies upon the ground,
looking more likely to secure an archaeologist as a purchaser than any one in
want of something to be turned to daily use; and, indeed, some of the boots and
shoes, in spite of all the care their cobblers have bestowed upon them, seem
about as wearable as lumps of coal. Per contra there are some very gay
heaps of women's boots, and one tray full of tiny bright-coloured. babies' shoes
that have a strangely innocent look in this den of dirt and greed. A
hulking bricklayer's-labourer halts before the tray. His Cap, his hair, his
flannel jacket, his corduroy trousers gartered with twine, are all so powdered
with dust that a cloud of it flies out, as from a beaten mat, when he jostles
against any one ; his beery face is as roughly red as one of his own bricks; he
has a stubbly chin, and a black, or rather a dull green, red, and lead-coloured
eye; and he carries under one arm a vicious bull-terrier, dropping blood from
recent bites on muzzle, paw, and ear. The bricklayer's-labourer is not a
captivating being, but I have hopes of him when he stops and buys a doll's-like
pair of steel-starred blue morocco shoes for his " little'un at whoam."
Salesmen shout at the top of their voices, [-176-] "Buy, buy,
buy;" "What gentleman'll stand treat next?£ &c., &c. Those
who come to buy, and those who only come to look, keep themselves warm, and
"enjoy company," or to wile away the time until the public-houses
open, are almost all making a noise of some kind or other. And so, in two
conflicting turbulent tides, little dreamt of by many a neighbouring church and
chapel goer, the motley, tobacco- scented crowd forces its way up and down.
How sweet the Sabbath thus to spend!
[--nb. grey numbers in brackets indicate page number, (ie. where new page begins), ed.--] |
see also beginning of above book - click here
see also Wentworth Street - click here
Petticoat Lane, 1897
[ILN Picture Library]
The neighbourhood of old Petticoat Lane on Sunday is one of the wonders of London, a medley of strange sights, strange sounds, and strange smells. Streets crowded so as to be thoroughfares no longer, and lined with a double or treble row of hand-barrows, set fast with empty cases, so as to assume the guise of market stalls. Here and there a cart may have been drawn in, but the horse has gone and the tilt is used as a rostrum whence the salesmen with stentorian voices cry their wares, vying with each other in introducing to the surrounding crowd their cheap garments, smart braces, sham jewellery, or patent medicines. Those who have something showy, noisily push their trade, while the modest merit of the utterly cheap makes its silent appeal from the lower stalls, on which are to be found a heterogeneous collection of such things as cotton sheeting, American cloth for furniture covers, old clothes, worn-out boots, damaged lamps, chipped china shepherdesses, rusty locks, and rubbish indescribable. Many, perhaps most, things of the silent cheap' sort are bought hi the way of business; old clothes to renovate, old boots to translate, hinges and door-handles to be furbished up again. Such things cannot look too bad, for the buyer may then persuade himself that he has a bargain unsuspected by the seller. Other stalls supply daily wants - fish is sold in large quantities - vegetables and fruit - queer cakes and outlandish bread. In nearly all cases the Jew is the seller, and the Gentile the buyer; Petticoat Lane is the exchange of the Jew, but the lounge of the Christian.
Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London, 1903