Crossing sweeper

Last updated
The Crossing Sweeper by William Powell Frith, 1858. TheCrossingSweeper.jpg
The Crossing Sweeper by William Powell Frith, 1858.

A crossing sweeper was a person working as a street sweeper who would sweep a path ahead of people crossing dirty urban streets in exchange for a gratuity. This practice was an informal occupation among the urban poor, primarily during the 19th century. It was the focus of fairly intense study and commentary, and attitudes toward the presence of crossing sweepers on city streets varied greatly among urban residents, ranging from appreciation for their work to feelings that they were a public nuisance. Crossing sweepers also found their way into 19th-century fiction and artwork, including a novel by Charles Dickens and a popular painting by William Powell Frith.

Contents

Description

Crossing sweepers were a common sight on the streets of large cities during much of the 19th century. The predominance of horse-drawn vehicles —and the general uncleanliness of urban streets—entailed certain difficulties in crossing intersections. For example, the long dresses of many elite women might easily be soiled by horse droppings (among other forms of refuse). Crossing sweepers, by sweeping the pavement ahead of a person crossing the street and creating a path that was referred to as a "broom walk," thus offered a service, particularly to the more affluent. [1] [2] [3]

In his multi-volume work London Labour and the London Poor (published 1851), English journalist Henry Mayhew referred to mid-19th-century crossing-sweeping as "one of those occupations which are resorted to as an excuse for begging..." [4] Crossing sweeping was likely a "last chance" source of income for many and had the advantage of requiring little or no startup capital. Those who worked as sweepers were able to ask for money from passersby without necessarily being viewed solely as beggars, and sweepers who regularly worked the same area likely were viewed more sympathetically by those who lived in the neighborhood, leading at times to more formal "weekly allowances." [4] Crossing sweepers may have earned a more substantial income in the early 19th century, prior to the arrival of the omnibus, but by the mid-19th century the returns were generally small, with as little as a shilling being considered a "good day's earnings" even for the relatively privileged sweepers on London's main thoroughfares. [5] [6]

Among those who worked as crossing sweepers were the elderly and the disabled or, as one 19th-century observer put it, "cripples, and old men and women, shrivelled like dry wrinkled apples, who are just strong enough to give the public that real convenience..." [7]

Children also worked as crossing sweepers, and the occupation was regularly portrayed in the art and literature of the day as the work of an impoverished child, usually a boy. [8] Children sweepers would sometimes work individually and at other times in groups. [9] In the latter situation there was often a designated leader—sometimes styled as "king" [10] —and the money was generally shared. [9] Groups of young crossing sweepers could be territorial and would fight others to maintain control of their "turf" if necessary. [9] In mid-19th-century New York City, crossing-sweeping was common among young girls, who had even fewer options for earning an income than did lower-class boys (with occasional prostitution being a notable exception). [11]

Some observers chronicled the "types" of crossing sweepers at great length. A piece in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal in 1852 discussed seven categories of sweepers found on the streets of London—Professional Sweeper; Morning Sweeper; Occasional Sweeper; Sunday Sweeper; deformed, maimed, and crippled sweepers; and Female Sweepers—who plied their trade with varying degrees of skill, effort, and financial success. [5] Henry Mayhew differentiated between "casual" and "regular" crossing sweepers, with the former only working certain days of the week and/or varying the location at which they worked while the latter swept at one particular corner almost every day. [4] In London Labour and the London Poor Mayhew discussed "Able-bodied" (divided into "male," "female," and "Irish"), "Afflicted or crippled," and "Juvenile" crossing sweepers, offering in-depth observations from and about actual sweepers with whom he spoke. [12]

Contemporaneous attitudes toward crossing sweeping

1853 cartoon in the British magazine Punch showing a crossing sweeper demanding (and being refused) payment from a well-to-do woman. PunchCartoon crossing sweeper.jpg
1853 cartoon in the British magazine Punch showing a crossing sweeper demanding (and being refused) payment from a well-to-do woman.

City residents had mixed reactions to crossing sweepers and their presence on urban streets. Richard Rowe viewed crossing-sweeping as "little better than a make-believe of work, as a pretext for begging, either directly or by suggestion." [7] Rowe did not see a problem with "alms-giving" to elderly or disabled crossing sweepers, but overall wanted to see their ranks "thinned considerably – viz., by the elimination of the adults who are able, and the young who might be trained to do something better..." [7] A writer in an 1858 issue of Building News expressed a similarly negative sentiment when referring to "those juvenile highwayman who, broom in hand, take possessions of our crossings and level black mail upon the public in general, and timid females in particular." [8]

Others viewed crossing sweepers as legitimate workers who provided a useful service and thus differentiated themselves from more nefarious persons encountered in the streets. An 1864 comment in The Art Journal noted that crossing sweepers "are of a different class from the pickpocket and vagrant classes who prowl about to make what prizes fall within their reach." [13] In 1882 a self-described "Lady Pedestrian" wrote the editors of The New York Times lamenting recent prohibitions on street sweepers:

A few years ago there were many children and men who turned out immediately after a snow-fall, and were daily to be met during the thaw, brushing the crossings as clean as they could. For this small service many foot passengers gladly gave a few small coins, regarding the sweepers not as beggars or vagrants, but as laborers, whose hard and disagreeable work enabled well-shod people to pass neatly on their way. There has, however, been a prohibition of street sweepers...The result is that on Wednesday last...there was not one crossing on which the snow and mud did not come full two inches above the sole of a thick gaiter, and it was entirely impossible to find a single crossing to the opposite side of the avenue which could be trod without sinking to the ankle...let us have the volunteer sweepers back for the comfort of a LADY PEDESTRIAN. [14]

Some older crossing sweepers suffered abuse from their fellow citizens, at times from children. Rowe described one London man, called "Parson," who was regularly "tormented" by youths of the street. However "the police and the omnibus-men, the newsvendors and the miscellaneous loungers hanging about the inn in front of which Parson's crossing, or rather crossings, stretched, did their best to protect the old fellow, and soundly cuffed his persecutors when they chanced to run their way..." [7]

In his detailed account of the lives and work of crossing sweepers, Henry Mayhew concluded that, "taken as a class, crossing-sweepers are among the most honest of the London poor. They all tell you that, without a good character and 'the respect of the neighborhood,' there is not a living to be got out of the broom." [15]

In literature and art

The occupation of crossing sweeper received perhaps its most famous literary treatment in Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House with the character of Jo, a homeless boy who "fights it out at his crossing among the mud and wheels, the horses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a scanty sum..." [16] Jo has been characterized as "one of the most significant figures" in the novel and as a way for Dickens to address juvenile vagrancy, which was seen as a serious social problem at the time. [17]

Dickens described Jo as:

not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts that perish. [18]

One scholar characterized Jo as being "depicted as almost completely bereft of agency, a child swept along by circumstances, made merely to 'move on,'" a member of "a nation that fails to recognize him as one of its citizens." [19] Jo was a popular character among readers of the novel which no doubt in part led to the production of a stage adaptation entitled Bleak House; or Poor 'Jo. A drama in four acts. [13]

1856 cartoon from Punch showing "the crossing sweeper nuisance." CrossingSweeperNuisance.jpg
1856 cartoon from Punch showing "the crossing sweeper nuisance."

A real fourteen-year-old youth named George Ruby who was called to testify at the Guildhall in 1850 is often thought to have been Dickens' inspiration for Jo (who, in the novel, was called to testify before an inquest). [20] While not disagreeing with that assessment, Edwin M. Eigner and Joseph I. Fradin have argued that an earlier, literary precedent comes from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1846 novel Lucretia, which also featured a young male crossing sweeper, this one named Beck. Eigner and Fradin suggest that both Jo and Beck are intensely symbolic figures for the two novelists, "the representative orphan of an entire society." [21]

An even earlier literary portrayal can be found in William Makepeace Thackeray's 1838 story, "Miss Shum's Husband," in which the apparently respectable husband actually makes his money as a crossing sweeper, to the horror of his servant Yellowplush.

Crossing sweepers were also regularly portrayed in the visual arts, and Mark Bills argues that "from the late eighteenth century, prints of crossing sweepers invariably had a satirical purpose." [8] Robert Sayer, William Marshall Craig, and Thomas Rowlandson all created prints of crossing sweepers in the late 18th century or early 19th century. [22] In the 1850s Punch magazine frequently printed satirical images of crossing sweepers, depicting "each one [as] a nuisance of modern life." [13] An 1856 article in the magazine entitled "The Crossing Sweeper Nuisance" offered nineteen humorous descriptions of different sweepers, including (invented) tales of woe designed to elicit sympathy, for example "a Crimean soldier, who was flogged and dismissed the army for protecting a female from the insults of his commanding officer." [8]

A more sympathetic portrayal was William Powell Frith's 1856 painting The Crossing Sweeper (pictured at the top of this article), the popularity of which was evinced by a market for painted and engraved replicas of the image. [23] Frith was a friend of Dickens and had painted versions of his characters before, though his model for The Crossing Sweeper was a real boy. [24] According to Frith's autobiography, the crossing sweeper who modelled for his painting attempted to steal Frith's gold pocket watch when the artist went out for lunch. [23]

Beginning in 1876 the British actress, Jennie Lee, made a career out of playing Jo, the crossing-sweeper, in the popular play Jo, a melodrama John Pringle Burnett based on Bleak House. [25]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Dickens</span> English novelist and social critic (1812–1870)

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Mayhew</span> British writer and activist (1812–1887)

Henry Mayhew was an English journalist, playwright, and advocate of reform. He was one of the co-founders of the satirical magazine Punch in 1841, and was the magazine's joint editor, with Mark Lemon, in its early days. He is also known for his work as a social researcher, publishing an extensive series of newspaper articles in the Morning Chronicle that was later compiled into the three-volume book London Labour and the London Poor (1851), a groundbreaking and influential survey of the city's poor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mudlark</span> Someone who scavenges for items of value on the shores of rivers

A mudlark is someone who scavenges the banks and shores of rivers for items of value, a term used especially to describe those who scavenged this way in London during the late 18th and 19th centuries. The practice of searching the banks of rivers for items continues in the modern era, with newer technology such as metal detectors sometimes being employed to search for metal valuables that may have washed ashore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chimney sweep</span> Person who cleans chimneys

A chimney sweep is a person who inspects then clears soot and creosote from chimneys. The chimney uses the pressure difference caused by a hot column of gas to create a draught and draw air over the hot coals or wood enabling continued combustion. Chimneys may be straight or contain many changes of direction. During normal operation, a layer of creosote builds up on the inside of the chimney, restricting the flow. The creosote can also catch fire, setting the chimney alight. The chimney must be swept to remove the soot.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheapside</span> Street in the City of London

Cheapside is a street in the City of London, the historic and modern financial centre of London, England, which forms part of the A40 London to Fishguard road. It links St Martin's Le Grand with Poultry. Near its eastern end at Bank Junction, where it becomes Poultry, is Mansion House, the Bank of England, and Bank station. To the west is St Paul's Cathedral, St Paul's tube station and square.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Farringdon Road</span> Road in Clerkenwell, London

Farringdon Road is a road in Clerkenwell, London.

<i>Bleak House</i> 1852–1853 novel by Charles Dickens

Bleak House is a novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between 12 March 1852 and 12 September 1853. The novel has many characters and several subplots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills. In a preface to the 1853 first edition, Dickens said there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably Thellusson v Woodford, in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, Bleak House helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Powell Frith</span> English painter (1819–1909)

William Powell Frith was an English painter specialising in genre subjects and panoramic narrative works of life in the Victorian era. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1853, presenting The Sleeping Model as his Diploma work. He has been described as the "greatest British painter of the social scene since Hogarth".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Costermonger</span> Street seller of fruit and vegetables

A costermonger, coster, or costard is a street seller of fruit and vegetables in British towns. The term is derived from the words costard and monger (seller), and later came to be used to describe hawkers in general. Some historians have pointed out that a hierarchy existed within the costermonger class and that while costermongers sold from a handcart or animal-drawn cart, mere hawkers carried their wares in a basket.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Street sweeper</span> Machine or person that cleans streets in urban areas

A street sweeper or street cleaner is a person or machine that cleans streets.

<i>London Labour and the London Poor</i> 4-volume study by Henry Mayhew, 1840s

London Labour and the London Poor is a work of Victorian journalism by Henry Mayhew. In the 1840s, he observed, documented and described the state of working people in London for a series of articles in a newspaper, the Morning Chronicle, which were later compiled into book form.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rag-and-bone man</span> Traditional name for some income-seekers

A rag-and-bone man or ragpicker or ragman, old-clothesman, junkman, or junk dealer, also called a bone-grubber, bone-picker, chiffonnier, rag-gatherer, rag-picker, bag board, or totter, collects unwanted household items and sells them to merchants. Scraps of cloth and paper could be turned into cardboard, while broken glass could be melted down and reused, and even dead cats and dogs could be skinned to make clothes. Traditionally, this was a task performed on foot, with the scavenged materials kept in a small bag slung over the shoulder. Some rag-and-bone men used a cart, sometimes pulled by a horse or pony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob's Island</span> Slum in Bermondsey, London, England

Jacob's Island was a notorious slum in Bermondsey, London, in the 19th century. It was located on the south bank of the River Thames, approximately delineated by the modern streets of Mill Street, Bermondsey Wall West, George Row and Wolseley Street. Jacob's Island developed a reputation as one of the worst slums in London, and was popularised by the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, published shortly before the area was cleared in the 1860s.

A rookery, in the colloquial English of the 18th and 19th centuries, was a city slum occupied by poor people and frequently also by criminals and prostitutes. Such areas were overcrowded, with low-quality housing and little or no sanitation. Local industry such as coal plants and gasholders polluted the rookery air. Poorly constructed dwellings, built with multiple stories and often crammed into any area of open ground, created densely-populated areas of gloomy, narrow streets and alleyways. By many, these parts of the city were sometimes deemed "uninhabitable".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">19th-century London</span> London-related events during the 19th century

During the 19th century, London grew enormously to become a global city of immense importance. It was the largest city in the world from about 1825, the world's largest port, and the heart of international finance and trade. Railways connecting London to the rest of Britain, as well as the London Underground, were built, as were roads, a modern sewer system and many famous sites.

<i>The Fool</i> (1990 film) 1990 British film

The Fool is a 1990 British film set in Victorian England's world of finance directed by Christine Edzard and produced by John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin, from a script by Edzard and Olivier Stockman. It stars Derek Jacobi, Cyril Cusack, Ruth Mitchell, Maria Aitken, Irina Brook, Paul Brook and Miranda Richardson. The camerawork was by British cinematographer Robin Vidgeon.

<i>The Crossing Sweeper</i> Painting by William Powell Frith

The Crossing Sweeper is an 1858 painting by the English painter William Powell Frith which has been described as breaking "new ground in its description of the collision of wealth and poverty on a London street." Frith later painted several versions of the same subject, updating the fashions.

<i>The Death of Poor Joe</i> 1901 British film by George Albert

The Death of Poor Joe is a 1901 British short silent drama film, directed by George Albert Smith, which features the director's wife Laura Bayley as Joe, a child street-sweeper who dies of disease on the street in the arms of a policeman. The film, which went on release in March 1901, takes its name from a famous photograph posed by Oscar Rejlander after an episode in Charles Dickens' 1853 novel Bleak House, and is the oldest known surviving film featuring a Dickens character.

<i>Capital</i> (novel) 2012 novel by John Lanchester

Capital (ISBN 9780571234622) is a novel by John Lanchester, published by Faber and Faber in 2012. The novel is set in London prior to and during the 2008 financial crisis, jumping between December 2007, April 2008, and August 2008. The title refers both to London as the capital city of the United Kingdom, and to financial capital. All of the main characters have a connection to Pepys Road, a street in the south London suburb of Clapham.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennie Lee (British actress)</span> Victorian era English stage actress

Jennie Lee was a Victorian Era English stage actress, singer and dancer whose career was largely entwined with the title role in Jo, a melodrama her husband, John Pringle Burnett, wove around a relatively minor character from the Charles Dickens novel, Bleak House. She made her stage debut in London at an early age and found success in New York and San Francisco not long afterwards. Lee may have first starred in Jo around 1874 during her tenure at San Francisco's California Theatre, but her real success came with the play's London debut on 22 February 1876 at the Globe Theatre in Newcastle Street. Jo ran for many months at the Globe and other London venues before embarking for several seasons on tours of the British Isles, a return to North America, tours of Australia and New Zealand and later revivals in Britain. Reduced circumstances over her final years forced Lee to seek assistance from an actor's pension fund subsidised in part by proceeds from Royal Command Performances.

References

  1. ↑ "The Crossing Sweeper Nuisance" . Retrieved 2010-03-13.
  2. ↑ "Crossing Sweepers". Jane Austen's World. 10 November 2007. Retrieved 12 March 2010.
  3. ↑ Bills, Mark (May 2004), "William Powell Frith's 'The Crossing Sweeper': An Archetypal Image of Mid-Nineteenth Century London", The Burlington Magazine , 147 (1214): 300–307
  4. 1 2 3 Mayhew, Henry (2009). "London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. II". Cosimo, Inc. p. 465. ISBN   9781605207353 . Retrieved 2010-03-13.
  5. 1 2 "London Crossing-Sweepers". Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. 1852-05-15. Retrieved 2010-03-13.
  6. ↑ Mayhew 466
  7. 1 2 3 4 Rowe, Richard (1881). "Life in the London Streets". pp. Chapter 9. Retrieved 2010-03-13.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Bills 303.
  9. 1 2 3 "Working Children in Britain". Leeds City Council. Archived from the original on 2008-03-21. Retrieved 2010-03-13.
  10. ↑ Mayhew 501.
  11. ↑ Stansell, Christine (1982). "Women, Children, and the Uses of the Streets: Class and Gender Conflict in New York City, 1850-1860". Feminist Studies. 8 (2): 314, 317–318. doi:10.2307/3177566. JSTOR   3177566.
  12. ↑ Mayhew 467-507.
  13. 1 2 3 Bills 304.
  14. ↑ "Who Sweeps the Crossings?". The New York Times. 1882-02-13. Retrieved 2010-03-13.
  15. ↑ Mayhew 466.
  16. ↑ Dickens, Charles (1853). "Bleak House". pp. CHAPTER XVI. Tom–all–Alone's. Retrieved 2010-03-15.
  17. ↑ Blount, Trevor (May 1965). "Poor Jo, Education, and the Problem of Juvenile Delinquency in Dickens' 'Bleak House'". Modern Philology. 62 (4): 325–339. doi:10.1086/389707. S2CID   162344958.
  18. ↑ Dickens, Charles (1853). "Bleak House". pp. CHAPTER XLVII. Jo's Will. Retrieved 2010-03-14.
  19. ↑ Vanden Bossche, Chris R. (2004). "Class Discourse and Popular Agency in "Bleak House"". Victorian Studies. 47 (1): 7–51. doi:10.1353/vic.2005.0031. S2CID   201790821.
  20. ↑ Dickens, Charles (1993). "Bleak House". Wordsworth Editions. p. xxvii. ISBN   9781853260827 . Retrieved 2010-03-14.
  21. ↑ Eigner, Edwin M.; Joseph I. Fradin (June 1969). "Bulwer-Lytton and Dickens' Jo". Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 24 (1): 98–102. doi:10.1525/ncl.1969.24.1.99p0270m (inactive 2024-07-08).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2024 (link)
  22. ↑ Bills 303-304.
  23. 1 2 Bills 307.
  24. ↑ Bills 304-305.
  25. ↑ Jennie Lee, Veteran Actress, Passes Away. Lowell Sun, May 3, 1930, p. 18
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.