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- 7406
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.842Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 7336
- text
- men, with the gallows in their eyes, and a whining lie in their mouths;
young boys, hollow-eyed and decrepit; and puny mothers, holding up puny
babes in the glare of the sun, formed the main features of the scene.
But these were diversified by instances of peculiar suffering, vice, or
art in attracting charity, which, to me at least, who had never seen
such things before, seemed to the last degree uncommon and monstrous.
I remember one cripple, a young man rather decently clad, who sat
huddled up against the wall, holding a painted board on his knees. It
was a picture intending to represent the man himself caught in the
machinery of some factory, and whirled about among spindles and cogs,
with his limbs mangled and bloody. This person said nothing, but sat
silently exhibiting his board. Next him, leaning upright against the
wall, was a tall, pallid man, with a white bandage round his brow, and
his face cadaverous as a corpse. He, too, said nothing; but with one
finger silently pointed down to the square of flagging at his feet,
which was nicely swept, and stained blue, and bore this inscription in
chalk:—
_“I have had no food for three days;
My wife and children are dying.”_
Further on lay a man with one sleeve of his ragged coat removed,
showing an unsightly sore; and above it a label with some writing.
In some places, for the distance of many rods, the whole line of
flagging immediately at the base of the wall, would be completely
covered with inscriptions, the beggars standing over them in silence.
But as you passed along these horrible records, in an hour’s time
destined to be obliterated by the feet of thousands and thousands of
wayfarers, you were not left unassailed by the clamorous petitions of
the more urgent applicants for charity. They beset you on every hand;
catching you by the coat; hanging on, and following you along; and,
_for Heaven’s sake,_ and _for God’s sake,_ and _for Christ’s sake,_
beseeching of you but _one ha’penny._ If you so much as glanced your
eye on one of them, even for an instant, it was perceived like
lightning, and the person never left your side until you turned into
another street, or satisfied his demands. Thus, at least, it was with
the sailors; though I observed that the beggars treated the town’s
people differently.
I can not say that the seamen did much to relieve the destitution which
three times every day was presented to their view. Perhaps habit had
made them callous; but the truth might have been that very few of them
had much money to give. Yet the beggars must have had some inducement
to infest the dock walls as they did.
As an example of the caprice of sailors, and their sympathy with
suffering among members of their own calling, I must mention the case
of an old man, who every day, and all day long, through sunshine and
rain, occupied a particular corner, where crowds of tars were always
passing. He was an uncommonly large, plethoric man, with a wooden leg,
and dressed in the nautical garb; his face was red and round; he was
continually merry; and with his wooden stump thrust forth, so as almost
to trip up the careless wayfarer, he sat upon a great pile of monkey
jackets, with a little depression in them between his knees, to receive
the coppers thrown him. And plenty of pennies were tost into his
poor-box by the sailors, who always exchanged a pleasant word with the
old man, and passed on, generally regardless of the neighboring
beggars.
The first morning I went ashore with my shipmates, some of them greeted
him as an old acquaintance; for that corner he had occupied for many
long years. He was an old man-of-war’s man, who had lost his leg at the
battle of Trafalgar; and singular to tell, he now exhibited his wooden
one as a genuine specimen of the oak timbers of Nelson’s ship, the
Victory.
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