THE ADVANTAGE OF TAKING A SHORT CUT THROUGH A COURT
(A Picture dedicated by Mr. Punch with his best wishes for success to the "Playground and General Recreation Society")
Punch, June 4, 1859
[-Vol.3-]
[-266-]
SOME LONDON STREET AMUSEMENTS
BY EDWIN PUGH
IT is Saturday and all the streets in this mixed neighbourhood
are a riot of children. Are you out? " says one boy to another and it seems
a superfluous question. Translated, however, it means "Are you on some
vexatious errand for your mother ? or are you at liberty to join in any fun that
may crop up?" The boy replies that he is out, and joins the noisy, moving
crowd.
Men must work and women must weep, says the song it might be
added that children must play. Even the ill-used, half-starved child of the
London slums can find surcease from the horrors of its lot in a world of
make-believe. Rag dolls and paper balls serve the purpose just as well as the
more elaborate toys of richer children and perhaps there is compensation for the
lack of such luxuries in an inevitable quickening of the imagination. Of course
there are things to be enjoyed in the streets of London that are, comparatively
speaking, quite aristocratic of their kind and out of the reach of the very
poorest. I refer to such subtle delights as riding in goat-shays, and flying
kites and air-balloons even marbles, balls, tops, and skipping-ropes are not to
be acquired without some small outlay. But effective substitutes for these
things can often be made at home by means of a little ingenuity and some
miscellaneous lumber. Carts and toboggans can be constructed out of soap-boxes
and the wheels of disused perambulators. It is just as easy to be happy with a
rusty iron tyre, a hoop off a butter-tub, a kite made out of a bit of cane and a
page from a copy-hook, a tin lid with a piece of string passed through a hole in
the centre that revolves merrily on its edge as you run, a lump of soft clay and
a catapault or a rhubarb-bind, as with a genuine shop-made article.
In a few years the sport will be out of these children. They
will be playing "pitch and toss," and "banker " with a [-267-]
penny pack of cards; they will, on high days, do their best to make the town
hideous with painted horns, and "ticklers" and "tormentors"
they will have money in their pockets and "fags" between their lips
but they will not be as happy as they are now.
It is mostly in the better streets that children play alone.
Here is one whipping a top; another is trundling a hoop; a girl is skipping; a
boy on a pair of stilts seems anxious to achieve something complicated in the
way of a broken nose; a very superior young person is engaged in the prehistoric
pastime of battledore and shuttlecock. A man has lately passed through this
by-way with a barrow laden with paper windmills and flags; these he has offered
in exchange for old jars and bottles and has emphasised his offer with
flourishes on a bugle. Now the street is gay with his wares. Yet this clean,
tidy boy, for instance, who has both a flag and a windmill, and who occupies his
time between bouncing a very handsome ball and counting his "alley
taws," has an air of aimless boredom. Another boy is skating on rollers ;
he, too, appears dissatisfied. Suddenly he takes off one skate, lends it to the
first boy, and in an instant both are happy, for here is companionship to
stimulate healthy rivalry. It is this spirit which animates the children of the
London streets and enables them to play with an earnestness which seems to
denote that, knowing their childhood will be but a short time, they are bent on
making the most of it.
Some of their games seem to be of a rather spiteful nature.
Here is a party playing "Ugly Bear." One boy crawls on the pavement
and the rest belabour him with caps attached to lengths of string. Here are
others playing " Egg Cap" and "Mondays and Tuesdays." If you
are a muff at this you will have to lay your open hand against a wall and allow
a boy to shy a ball at it. "King of the Castle" and "No Man
Standing" are just red savagery set to rules; "Release" is plain
fighting with the anger left out ; whilst "Leading the Blind Horse" is
merely an elaborate practical joke, the point of which is to blindfold a
trusting innocent and then to maltreat him in any handy way that his
defencelessness suggests. Better games than these, though dangerous still, are
in progress. Notable among them is tip-cat, but this is perilous only to
onlookers.
These urchins who are engaged in throwing pieces of the
roadway at other pieces of the roadway are playing "Gully" or
"Duck" ; they have just been playing Castles, a game in which loose
stones also play a big shin-shattering part. "Horny Winkle's Horses,"
in which one set of boys stoops down and makes a bridge of backs against a wall,
and other boys ride them to a thrice-repeated chorus of "Charley Knackers-one,
two, three!" or, until they collapse, is another boisterous game. In this
category come also "Rounders, a game resembling baseball; [-268-]
"Chevy Chace," a form of prisoners base in which one unit of a
"side" is captured and held to ransom until a comrade rescues him;
"I-spy-I," or hide and seek ; "Tom Tiddler's Ground,"
"Red Rover " and "Puss-puss," which resemble one another in
that one player is prominent above all the rest.
This is also the case in "Follow-my-Leader" and the
various sorts of Leap-frog - inch-it, foot-it, "Fly-the-Garter," and
Spanish - with the chief differencw that whilst in "Follow-my-Leader"
the prominent figure is rather heroic, in leap-frog he is the butt. This butt or
sport of fortune is known as He, and appears in many games. In the
various forms of "Touch"- "Touch Wood" and "Touch
Iron," "French Touch" "Cross Touch," and "Widdy-widdy-warny"
- it is invariably He who has to catch the others; it is He who
comes in for all the indignities. The insane-looking urchin holding his knee is
playing "French Touch"; he was touched on the knee by the last He, and
must not remove his hand until he touches somebody else. This band of six or
seven, all clasping hands and stretched across the road, are at "Widdy-widdy-warny."
"Kick-pot " and "Strike Up and Lay Down" are games in which
one player opposes all the rest. The last named is a rough form of trap, bat,
and ball ; but the trap is dispensed with and the ball merely bounced on the
ground. The fielder of the ball endeavours to hit the bat (usually a rough piece
of wood) which the striker places flat on the ground. "Straights,"
cries the fielder ; and, if the striker has omitted to shout " No
straights," he is at liberty to stand in a line with the bat.
Other robust games, but which belong - either properly or of
necessity - to the winter, are "Chalk Corners," which is "Hare
and Hounds " (only the hares blaze a trail by drawing arrows on the
pavement instead of by dropping paper), and snowballing, and sliding. The
fashions of street cricket and football overlap at one period of the year, and
both are being played. An amusement for the boys that is an exasperation for the
girls will crop up when two blithe spirits snatch a skippng-rope and run down
the street, entangling all the indignant petticoats within their sphere of
influence.
In the midst of the prevalent turmoil there are boys at games
that might be called "quiet," if only the players would refrain from
argument. "Buttons " can be played without any adjuncts at all, or in [-269-]
conjunction with a ball, a peg-top, or a knicker - the last a heavy,
leaden disc. There are some curious conventions connected with these games that
are religiously observed. You may not, for example, use iron buttons or buttons
below the regulation size; and if the peg of your top measures less than an
average thumbnail it is a "mounter" and may be thrown over the house
by any boy who can get hold of it. Other "quiet" games of a
competitive sort are "Buck, buck! how many fingers do I hold up ? "
and, in their season, "Cherry-bobs," and "Conquers," ie. horsechestnuts.
A fascinating toy for solitaries is a disc of wet leather on the end of a piece
of string which will adhere fast to the ground or, by adhesion, raise a
cellar-plate. This is known as a "sucker."
Besides all these regulation games there are others which owe
their origin to some passing London show or predominant public interest. War
always fires the boys. A military exhibition may inspire them to a pickaback
wrestling tournament But, as a rule, such games have a brief vogue, the genius
of organisation not being common in children. A notable exception to this dictum,
however, was to be found during the Boer campaign in the wonderfully drilled
regiments of juvenile soldiers that paraded the London streets. It was a
memorable spectacle to see these bands of little ones, to whom some tiny vivandieres
were usually attached, marching along in perfect step through the mire or
dust of the road, wearing their helmets and tunics, carrying their weapons, also
an "ambulance," beating their drums and blowing their toy trumpets,
With that dignified gravity of which only children know the secret.
But, generally speaking, the best games of make-believe are
either rooted in tradition or founded on the everyday life of the participants.
[-270-] Boys are not so fond of
these games of make-believe as girls are; but you will find them playing at
"Horses" with reins of rainbow wool which they weave on a machine
constructed of a cotton reel and four pins or, with lanterns, puffing and
steaming along in imitation of a train. A thunder-shower will set them to
floating paper-boats in the flooded gutters. Mud, at all times,
will move the younger fry to make pies. Sometimes, if they are of a gentle
disposition, they will join the girls in a mimic domestic drama of Mothers and
Fathers, or " Schools," or "Shops." They will reel about the pavement
in dreadful pantomime as "father " they will buy imaginary wares with imaginary coin
submit to be cross-questioned or cuffed as the pupils of a small but imperious
mistress. They will take part in "kiss-in-the-ring" and the other
innumerable love-making games: "Ring o' Roses," "Poor Jenny is a-Weeping,"
"Bingo," "London Bridge is Broken Down,"
"Wallflowers," and many others.
Their name is legion, and a recital of the rhymes that are chanted in a singsong
accompaniment to them would fill many pages. The ruling principle is
invariably that a boy or girl shall choose one of the opposite sex, kiss, and
then leave the other to pursue a similar policy of selection. These little ones
seem to play at love for practice they blush, and are tremulous and constrained; the boys cut
awkward capers to show how terribly they are at ease; the girls are fiercely
competitive for the favour of their particular
sweethearts.
There are games in which the sexes mingle that are not love-making
games: "Oranges and Lemons," "Here We Come Gathering Nuts and May,"
"Several Men Come to Work," and "Honey-pots." The first two of these games
resolve themselves into a tug-of-war. "Several Men Come to Work" is a
game in which trades are represented by dumb show. In "Honey-pots" you are
trussed up, with your hands clasped under your legs, and swung to and fro by
two other players. These things are shrouded in a mystery impenetrable to the
mere masculine intelligence, even among juveniles. No boy ever really arrives at the true inwardness of
Hopscotch, for instance. It is as baffling as feminine human nature itself,
whether it be of the variety that depends on a series of circles and numbers, or
on a drawing known as "Spider's Web" which rather resembles a
periwinkle-shell
in outline and has initials written on it in set spaces. The tiny maids, hopping on one leg, kick at a piece
of china or a flat stone ; and if they fail in their incomprehensible endeavours
they seem to go on just the same, and if they succeed they are as pleased as a
cat in the fender, though it seems to make no difference either way. Then there
is "Five Stones" better known as " Gobs" at which they will
play for hours without tiring, though the game consists merely in sitting on
a doorstep and bouncing a big marble and picking up stones and catching them
dexterously on the back
of the hand. They will nurse a doll too, in an abstracted way,
all by themselves ; or swing on a rope attached to a lamp-post or the railings,
monotonously, backward and forward with pathetically intent faces, showing
no sign of pleasure. When they play together they are noisier but you rarely see
them smile. At the game of "Higher and Higher," which begins and ends in
jumping over a rope, they display an amazing agility, whisking their bodies
into the air by a revolving action and clearing almost their own height.
And all the while, in many cases, they have to play another
part of little mother to younger brothers and sisters. They ape, with a cruel
fidelity, the methods of stern parents, sometimes covering their charges with
abuse, slapping, shaking, touzling them but they are very solicitous for the
little ones' safety all the same. In short, they are serving their
apprenticeship to life. Whilst the boys are being Red Indians and pirates, and
yearning to run amuck through the Ten Commandments with a cardboard sword, the
girls are learning how to be mothers. For, though she plays, the poor little
girl of the London streets is never quite a child.
George R. Sims (ed.), Living London, 1902