Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 2 of 4.—1857-1874. Graves Charles Larcom

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СКАЧАТЬ she would have conferred upon him either a baronetcy or the Grand Cross of the Bath (both of which he declined), and asking his acceptance of a miniature portrait of herself.

      Peabody's gifts to London amounted in all to £500,000, and set an example which native millionaires have done well to follow. But he was an even more munificent benefactor to his own country, where he gave at least a million to education. When he died in London in 1869 Punch, in his memorial verses, contrasted the feelings aroused in the two nations with those of the "mourners" of most rich men: —

      No common mourners here such office fill —

      A mother and a daughter, grand of frame,

      Albeit one in blood, oft twain in will,

      And jealous either of the other's fame.

      But by this bier they pause from jar and boast,

      Urged by no rivalry but that which strives

      Him that lies here to love and honour most,

      Ranking his life highest among the lives.

      Of men that in their tongue and blood claim part:

      And well may child and mother mourn for one

      Who loved mother and child with equal heart,

      Nor left, for either, Love's best works undone.

      The beneficent use of great wealth on a great scale seldom evades ultimate acknowledgment. Punch said no more in his tribute to Peabody than that great and humane American deserved. But minor endeavours were not overlooked, even where they led to no immediate results. Such, for example, was the proposal of F. D. Maurice and others to found a Working Women's College in 1864. Classes for women had been held at the Working Men's College from 1855 to 1860. The larger scheme was not realized, but has been revived within the last year by the establishment of the Working Women's College at Beckenham. Such again was the establishment of the London Dressmaking Company in 1865, under the patronage of Lord Shaftesbury and the Bishops of London and Oxford, to which Punch gave a vigorous puff-preliminary in his editorial columns.

      In 1858 the fate of Emily Druce had shown that the plea of Hood's "Song of the Shirt" was in danger of being forgotten. But sweated labour was not confined to the cheap clothing trade. In 1863 West-End milliners came under the microscope of Parliament and Mr. Punch: —

      Public indignation has been excited by the accounts of the death of Mary Anne Walkley, a girl employed by Madame Elise, of Regent Street, wife of one Isaacson, and a notorious dressmaker. "Long hours in an overcrowded room and sleeping in an ill-ventilated bedroom," said Sir George Grey, "caused the young girl's death." What is to be done? Lord Shaftesbury in the Lords, and Mr. Bagwell in the Commons, called attention to the system under which such girls are killed; and the man Isaacson, who seems to fill a similar office to that of Mr. Mantalini, and who writes English of which that gent would be proud, issued a letter full of impertinence and bad grammar, in defence of Mrs. Isaacson's place. Thereupon the parish requested other testimony, and Dr. Lankester examined the premises, and found the dormitories rather better and the workroom rather worse than had been expected.

      Madame La Modiste: "We would not have disappointed your Ladyship, at any sacrifice, and the robe is finished à merveille."

      These tragedies and the efforts which they prompted serve as a convenient transition to a more general survey of Labour problems, Labour legislation, and Labour organization and representation as they are revealed and discussed in the pages of Punch from 1857 to 1874. Under the recently established and rapidly extending joint reign of steam and coal, it was only natural that rural life should recede into the background. Railway construction had drawn off many labourers from agriculture, and the influx of labour into the manufacturing districts continued apace. In the prospectus of the Dressmaking Company given above, the work-hours are given as ten. But in 1859 the movement among working-men for a nine-hours' day had already been started. Strikes were common, but Punch discourages them on the ground that the men always lost in the long run, and that the "agitators" – the name "Labour Leaders" had not yet emerged – were the real criminals. The Examiner took the same line in 1861 when it wrote "the submission of workmen to the tyranny of their Unions is at once one of the most curious and lamentable phenomena of our time." Yet the existence of genuine distress is not denied, and in a little parable in verse entitled "Men and Bees," profit-sharing between masters and men is recommended as the true solution.

      On what was still, in spite of Factory Acts and other measures, the greatest blot on our industrial system – the employment of child labour —Punch spoke with no uncertain voice. Early in 1860 he gives Lord Brougham a good mark for taking up the question in the Lords: —

      Lord Brougham, always true to his humane instincts, brought before the Lords the case of the young children employed in Bleach Works. It is a cruel one. Infants of seven and eight years old are at work for eighteen hours, and are sometimes four nights without sleep. The brutalities by which the poor little children are kept sufficiently awake for the purposes of their task-masters are shocking. Years ago, when the cruelties of the climbing-boy trade were exposed in the Lords, a noble Lord told a good story, made their Lordships laugh, and by getting the Bill thrown over for a year, left a new batch of children to the mercies of the Sweep. There was nothing of this kind to-night, and Lord Granville promised information. He will be good enough to remember that Lord Brougham has tendered information, which proves that our friend Mammon is, as usual, doing the work of Moloch.

      Climbing Boys and Girls

      Here, at any rate, there is no sympathy for the greedy capitalist, who comes off as badly as the "agitator." The mention of the chimney-sweeps is timely. In 1864 the employment of the climbing boys had been prohibited by Act of Parliament for twenty years. Yet the Act had been so systematically evaded that in that year more than 3,000 children were still kept at labour in that filthy and unhealthy form of slavery. The subject was brought up in the House of Commons in April by Mr. Digby Seymour, and furnished Punch with an excuse for assailing those "sentimental and pious ladies" who "prefer subscribing to societies for converting little Hottentots to using influence to suppress the atrocities committed upon little white children at home." A month later Lord Shaftesbury intervened in the Lords: the details which he brought forward were too shocking for reproduction, but "fine ladies who mew over the sorrows of the Circassians, and devout ladies who send missionaries to the Chinese, had better know what is done in their own houses, and within a few feet of their own beds, with the children of white English folk."

      The kidnapping of little boys had been revived, and at a meeting held in York the following agreement was signed by the assembled sweeps: —

      "We, the undersigned Master Sweeps of the City of York, mutually agree, from and after this date, not to employ Climbing Boys and Girls in our business; that the Act of Parliament on their behalf made should be strictly complied with; and that we ought no longer to risk the heavy penalties it prescribes, both against householders and ourselves."

      It thus appears that, in York at least, the employment of climbing girls had become almost or quite as common as that of climbing boys.

      Lord Shaftesbury's "Chimney Sweepers Regulation Act" (1864) provided that a chimney sweeper convicted of causing or allowing any person under the age of twenty-one to ascend or descend a chimney or enter a flue for the purpose of sweeping it or extinguishing a fire might be sent to prison for a term not exceeding six months with or without hard labour. But master chimney sweeps still continued to "snap their sooty fingers at the law." In the issue of March 2, 1867, Punch reproduces the following business "card": —

      "William Burges, Chimney Sweeper, No. 36 Bolton Street, Chorley, flatters himself with having boys of the best size for such branch of business suitable for a Tunnel or Chimney, and that it is now in his power to render his assistance in a more extensive manner СКАЧАТЬ