Shoeblacks - the Streets - Public Vehicles.

Chapter VII.

Shoeblacks - The Streets - Public Vehicles.

The common people of Dublin were eminently distinguished by peculiar traits of character, in which they differed from the populace of every other city. Among them the shoeblacks were a numerous and formidable body, the precursors of Day and Martin, till the superior merits of the latter put an end to the trade. The polish they used was lampblack and eggs, of which they purchased in the markets all that were rotten. Their implements consisted of a three-legged stool, a basket containing a blunt knife, called a spudd, a painter’s brush, and an old wig.

A gentleman going out in the morning with dirty boots or shoes, was sure to find a shoeblack sitting on his stool at the corner of the street. He laid his foot in his lap without ceremony, where the artist scraped it with his spudd, wiped it with his wig, and then laid on his composition as thick as black paint with his painter’s brush. The stuff dried with a rich polish, requiring no friction, and little inferior to the elaborated modern fluids, save only in the intolerable odour exhaled from eggs in a high state of putridity, and which filled any house you entered before the composition was quite dry, and sometimes tainted even the air of fashionable drawing-rooms. Polishing shoes, we should mention, was at this time a refinement almost confined to cities, people in the country being generally satisfied with grease. The circumstance is recorded in the ballad of the famous wedding Baltimore:-

“Oh! lay by the fat to grease the priest’s boots.”

Goose grease was the favourite and most fashionable, and so was reserved for his reverence.

These artists were distinguished for other qualities as well as professional skill. Their costume was singularly squalid - if possible, generally exceeding the representation of the brother of the brush preserved in Hogarth’s picture of the idle apprentice, one of whose associates is a member of the craft, with his basket and brush, playing chuck-farthing on a tombstone during Divine service on Sunday. But the Dublin shoeblack far excelled his English contemporary in qualities designated by the alliteration of “wit and wickedness, dirt and drollery.” Miss Edgeworth has preserved some traits of their genius in her admirable essay on Irish bulls, most ingeniously proving that what appeared to be the blundering phraseology of this class was in reality figurative and poetical language, and a tissue of tropes and metaphors.

[The sketch is so generally known, that we forbear to quote it. The fair authoress will pardon us, however, if we suggest an amendment. In her version, Bill concludes his statement with the following passage “You lie, says I; with that he ups with a lump of a two-year old, and lets drive at me. I outs with my bread-earner, and gives it him up to Lamprey in the bread-basket.” All the knives were then made by the famous cutler of the name of Lamprey, which was impressed on the blade. The true reading is, “up to de Y in the bread-basket,” the name being always formed with the L to the point; so that the blade, up to the last letter; just touching the handle, was buried in his body. This was literally the classical description quoted by Miss Edgeworth - caulo tenus abdidit ensem.

One known by the simple appellation of “Bill” - perhaps the very Bill whom Miss Edgeworth has immortalized - was distinguished on many other occasions for his ready wit. He generally sat on Ormond-quay, at the Corner of Arran-street’ and had an overflow of customers*, *who resorted to his stool as much to hear his wit as to receive his polish. Some ladies, at that time stars in the Irish court, were not very scrupulous in seeking such entertainment, and frequently accosted Bill to hear his *bons mots, *though they were not always fit to be repeated.

One day, the gay Mrs. Stratford walked up to him, and by way of entering into conversation and hearing his good things, she asked him the way to the Phoenix Park. While Bill was politely directing her, an aide-de-camp came up, to whom she turned and whispered that she was about to extract something witty from Bill; so, accosting him again, she renewed the conversation, and begged him to go on, adding “and so, sir, you were saying - “Bill, offended at her inattention, replied, “Oh, be des, marm, I was saying - you are de ould proverb - tell a story to a ---,” and then repeated one, which, though singularly apposite, is too coarse for these pages. The fair querist hastened away, satisfied with one specimen of Bill’s wit, with which the aide-de-camp afterwards regaled the viceregal circle. Such coarse humour was the delight of the court then held in the Castle of Dublin.

The number of crippled and deformed beggars that haunted all places of resort in Ireland was long a subject of remark to strangers. Among the notable efforts of the Irish Parliament for the relief of the poor, was one of turning this class, the maimed and halt, in Dublin, into shoeblacks and newsvenders. To secure them employment, a statute was passed in 1773, by which young and able-bodied shoeblacks in the city were made liable to be committed as vagabonds. This provision, like many others of the very silly code of which it formed a part, seems never to have been very rigidly executed; and for many a year afterwards the fraternity flourished as sound in health and limb as ever.

The rapid improvement of the streets was destined, however, soon to prove far more destructive to the craft than commitments; and Messrs. MacAdam and the paving-board were worse enemies than beadles and parish constables. The state of the best streets, about century ago, was much worse than the Pill-lane or Goat Alley [There were two places of this name in Dublin. One is the present Digges-Lane; the other was off Francis-street] of 30 years ago. There were no areas in front of houses, as there are now, in all streets consisting of private residences; and the spouts, instead of being carried down to the ground by trunks, so as to suffer the water to run off in a confined stream, projected out either from the roof, or half-way down the wall, so as to pour in torrents over a large space below after every shower.

Sewers there were few or none; end many houses having no rere or place of deposit behind, the inhabitants threw all species of filth into the middle of the street, so that Dublin was as little purified as Edinburgh or Lisbon. As late as the year 1811 there was not one covered sewer in the most populous district of the city - the Liberty, south of the Coombe; and it is a very singular circumstance that when the great sewer through Capel-street was commenced under the powers vested in the paving-board, after 1806, that street being then one of the most populous in Dublin, and in which the most thriving shopkeepers of the day lived, the sewer was covered in at *the desire of the inhabitants, *and left unfinished. [“History of Dublin,” vol. ii, p. 1077. The sewer was so wide and deep in proportion to the breadth of the street, that the inhabitants were afraid the foundation part of their houses would give way and fall into it.] For want of sewers, the filth and water were received in pits, called cesspools, dug before the doors, and covered in, and those continued in Sackville-street, and other places, long after the year 1810; and many now remember the horrid sight and smell which periodically offended the inhabitants in the most fashionable streets, when those Stygian pools were opened and emptied.

To the causes of accumulating filth was to be added the excessive narrowness of the streets. Chancery-lane, once one of the most fashionable streets in the city, and the residence of all the leading members of the legal profession, who have now migrated to Merrion-square, is hardly the width of a modern stable-lane; and Cutpurse-row, [Now part of Cornmarket] the leading thoroughfare from the southern road to the eastern end of the town, was, before it was widened, in 1810, only 15 feet broad.

Among the mementoes of the former state of the streets of our metropolis, some, not the least curious, are the various acts passed for their improvement, which draw most piteous pictures of their condition. From one passed in 1717, it appears to have been a lucrative business to lay dirt in the streets for the purpose of making manure. In such a state of the city shoeblacks must have had a thriving trade.

The advance of improvements in our metropolis was occasionally marked by events which exhibit strange traits. Among others, Gorges Edmund Howard mentions a characteristic anecdote of the mode of carrying the law into effect in the year 1757. After the institution of the Wide-street Commissioners, who were then first appointed for the purpose of opening a passage “from Essex-bridge to the royal palace, the Castle of Dublin,” they proceeded to carry the work into execution; but when the bargains for the houses they had purchased were concluded, the inhabitants refused to give up possession, alleging they had six months to remain; and prepared bills for injunctions against the Commissioners. A host of labourers were engaged with ladders and tools in the night before the day on which the injunctions were to be applied for, who proceeded at the first light in the morning to strip the roofs, and in a short time left the houses open to the sky. The terrified inhabitants bolted from their beds the streets, under the impression that the city was attacked, of which there were some rumours, as it was a time of war. On learning the cause, they changed their bills of injunction into bills of indictment, but the Commissioners proceeded without further impediment.

Another fatal enemy to the craft of shoeblacks was the increase and cheapness of public vehicles. About 50 years after the introduction of coaches into England, the first hackney-coach stand was established in London. It was formed, A.D. 1634, by an experimenting sea captain, named Bailey, at the May-pole, in the Strand; but the general use of one-horse vehicles is of very recent introduction there, dating no farther back than 1820, when the Londoners borrowed their cabs from their Parisian neighbours.

The precise date of the introduction of hackney-coaches into Dublin we know not; but the first arrangement for regulating and controlling them was made in 1703, when their number was limited to 150, and each horse employed in drawing them was required to be “in size 14 hands and a half, according to the standard.” The hackney-coaches we borrowed from our English neighbours, as their name imports; but our one-horse vehicles have always been peculiar to ourselves, and were in use long before anything of a similar kind was introduced into England. The earliest and rudest of these were the “Ringsend cars,” so called from their plying principally to that place and Irishtown, then the resort of the *beau monde *for the benefit of sea-bathing. This car consisted of a seat suspended on a strap of leather, between shafts, and without springs. The noise made by the creaking of the strap, which supported the whole weight of the company particularly distinguished this mode of conveyance. Its merits may be judged of by the mode in which it is alluded to by Theophilus Cibber, in his familiar epistle to Mr. Warburton in 1753:- “There straddles he over the buttocks of the horse, with his pedestals on the shafts, like the driver of a Ringsend car, furiously driving through thick and thin, bedaubed, besplashed, bespattered, and besmeared.”

The Ringsend car was succeeded by the “noddy,” so called from its oscillating motion backwards and forwards. It was a low vehicle, capable of holding two persons, and drawn by one horse. It was covered with a calash, open before, but the aperture was usually filled by the “noddy-boy,” who was generally a large-sized man, and occupied a seat that protruded back, so that he sat in the lap of his company. The use of the noddy by certain classes grew into a proverb:-

“Elegance and ease, like a shoeblack in a noddy.”

The next improvement was the “jingle,” a machine rolling on four wheels, but so put together that the rattling of the work was heard like the bells of a waggon team. This was succeeded by the outside-jaunting- car, which still holds its place, and the covered ear, which has been quite beaten out of the field by the cab

The jingle and jaunting-car were both in use for some time after the Union, when most of the Irish nobility became absentees, and gave occasion to the *bon mot *of the witty Duchess of Richmond, that there were but two titled men who frequented her soirees at the Castle - Sir John Jingle and Sir John Jaunting-Carr; alluding to Sir John Stevenson, the celebrated musician, and Sir John Carr, [An Englishman, who published accounts of his tours in many countries; one in Ireland, 1806, for which he was knighted by the Duke of Bedford, Lord Lieutenant.] of pocket-book celebrity.

Before the use of one-horse cars became so general and popular, the common vehicle for a single passenger was a sedan. The introduction of sedans into England is due to King Charles I., when a prince, and the Duke of Buckingham, who brought them from Spain.

Though the notion of “degrading Englishmen into beasts of burden” was at first exceedingly unpopular, the people soon became accustomed to it. In process of time the chair became of almost universal use. In Hogarth’s time it was a very general favourite in London, especially among the fashionable. Chairs still survived in Dublin from 20 to 30 years ago, but were devoted almost solely to the service of old ladies and invalids. The notion of a healthy man or woman traversing our clean and even streets in a sedan, would now appear nearly as ludicrous as a man in a bonnet and petticoats; but it was far otherwise 60 years ago. A chair was then as indispensable to every family of distinction as a coach; and public chairs for hire were more numerous than any other public vehicle. Women always used them in cases where they would now walk; and men in full dress, in the gaudy fashion of that day, were equally unscrupulous as to the charge of effeminacy. In 1771 the number of “hackney-coaches, landaus, chariots, postchaises, and Berlins,” licensed by the Governors of the Foundling Hospital (in whom the jurisdiction was then rested) to ply in Dublin and the environs, was limited to 300, while the number of sedans was 400. The author of the *Philosophical Survey, *writing in 1775, says - “It is deemed a reproach for a gentlewoman to be seen walking in the streets. I was advised by my bankers to lodge in Capel-street, near Essex-bridge, being in less danger of being robbed, *two chairmen *not being deemed sufficient protetion.” [Phil. Survey, p. 46.]

The Irish seem to have preferred walking with a chair to making more speed with any other conveyance. The number of Irish chairmen in London was often remarked. They made a fearful engine of attack in riots, by sawing the poles of their chairs in two, at the thick part in the middle - each pole thus supplying two terrific bludgeons.

The dangers of the streets, alluded to by the writer above quoted, were a fertile subject of complaint in the sister country, as well as here; but the footpads of Dublin robbed in a manner, we believe, peculiar to themselves. The streets were miserably lighted - indeed, in many places, hardly lighted at all. So late as 1812 there were only 26 small oil lamps to light the immense square of Stephen’s-green, which were therefore 170 feet from one another. The footpads congregated in a dark entry, on the shady side of the street, if the moon shone; if not, the dim and dismal light of the lamps was little obstruction. A cord was provided with a loop at the end of it. The loop was laid on the pavement, and the thieves watched the approach of a passenger. If he put his foot in the loop it was immediately chucked. The man fell prostrate, and was dragged rapidly up the entry to some cellar or waste yard, where he was robbed, and sometimes murdered. The stun received by the fall usually prevented the victim from ever recognising the robbers. We knew a gentleman who had been thus robbed, and when he recovered found himself in an alley at the end of a lane off Bride-street, nearly naked, and severely contused and lacerated by being dragged over the rough pavement.

According to the late Mr. Knight’s account, the last of the old London shoeblacks might have been seen in 1820, in a court at the north of Fleet-street. We believe the last of the old “regular shoeblaeks” in Dublin had his stand at the corner of Essex-street and Crampton-court, and disappeared at a much earlier period - more than 60 years ago. The original crafts-men, such as we have described them, were succeeded by peripatetic practitioners, who used the modern blacking that requires friction. The improvement never throve properly, however, until it got into the hands of the organized boy-brigades, which are now to be found in most of the large cities of Great Britain and Ireland.

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