The Express.
London, England, 1868-08-25 00:00:00

THE POOR IN THE HOT WEATHER.

l'irrs is a heading under shelter of which a
hydred wise things might be said, but we are not
now going to be very wise or very copious. During
the weary sweltering days that have been some-
7iow got through since May, few of us who have
'had to pass by or along very poor neighbourhoods,
such as Tatty boy's Bents, Bleeding-heart-yard,
Paradise-row, Mount-pleasant, or the like, can
have escaped thoughts of wonder at the way in
which the inhabitants bore the heat and did
their work. While we, efferainates that we are !
have been threatening revolution because we could
not get ice enough, how has Mrs. Nunaris, the
laundress down the court, been getting on P As we
have passed by, we have seen her put the box-
iron up to her face just as she did when she
pumped KIT about his love affairs, and we have
marvelled greatly. Down Paradise-row we have not
only seen dirty women, naked almost to the waist,
suckling dirtier babies ; we have seen, inside, the
mangle going, and the small fry, dusty and dis-
hevelled, at loggerheads ; with six mule canaries
en the wall over a water-coloured print of the
Last Supper, and several rabbit-hutches, visible
through the back door in the yard. And how
these poor human creatures have borne the stifling
heat who knows ? Temper it as we might, we our-
selves have found it irritating; and, really, if the poor
were to quarrel more, and drink more, and murder
more, in such weather as we had this summer, it
would scarcely be surprising. There are usually
pumps in these neighbourhoods ; but it must take
a good deal of spring water, ever so cold, to quench
the thirst induced by the feeding habits of the
poor. In the very hottest weather, red herrings
and periwinkles—politely called bloaters and
winkles—have met an undiminished sale in Bleed-
ing-heart-yard; and what is thirstier eating than a
red herring ?

For one thing, we must not forget the teapot,
the ever-ready oonsolation of Mrs. NUBBLEB and her
friends. But everybody who keeps his eyes open
as he goes about the streets must have been
struck, especially during the last two years, with

the increasing popularisation of claret (of whatever
quality) as a drink among the poor. , Threepence
• glass for " iced claret" has beau and is a com-
mon price in very shabby neighbourhood', and
2d. a glans is not uncommon. There is also an
enormous increase, if we may judge by the
ordinary signs in such matters, in the
sale of very light bottled beers, at low
prices—we have seen it as low as twopence
half-penny the imperial pint. These precise
drinks, however, do not roach down to the ques-
tion of the refreshments of the very poor; except
when they have a treat now and then. Have any
of our readers ever wondered what is the con-
sumption of gingerbeer at a stall in a low neigh-
bourhood F Accident enables us to give a few
facto about the consumption of that and other re-
freshments at a stall attached to a small general
shop in such a district. We cannot say whether the
facto are typical or not, but such as they are, they
may be relied upon :—" How much ginger-pop did
" I sell in a day, sir i' I've eold as much as eleven
" &Mins' worth. Fourteen shillins of a Sunday.
" The beer is eightpenoe a dozen, and there's
" thirteen to the dozen. Sometimes they haves
" sherbet. Sometimes they haves sherbet
" and milk. That's very nice ; you try it
" air. They comes into the shop, and says,
" Minds, give us a ha'porth of sherbet in a
" ' haporth o' milk, and put a little water to it.'
" If you mix the sherbet with the milk very thick,
" so as the spoon can stand up in it, it's like
" hice. You try that, sir, We never had no him
" There was hice on the bill in the window, but we
" couldn't afford that. Sometimes a F ailor comes
" in and bastes (mks) where the hice is, and we
" says, down in the collar, of course. Sometimes
" they can't afford nothing but water. They
" comes in and says, ' Missis, give us a penn'orth
" o' bread and a ha'porth o' treacle, and cut
" out a piece o' the bread, and lot's have a glass
" o' water.' So then they makes me put the
" treacle into the hole, and they dips the bit as I
" cut out into the treacle. We always gives 'em
" the water in a tumbler. Sometimes they has as
" much water as they like, and then calls for a
" bottle o' ginger-beer to finish up. It makes it
" more of a feast, sir."
It makes it more of a feast! Little Dorrit'e
lover, sitting out among the damp, flapping
clothes hung up in the yard, " thinks its groves,
" sir." Ye gentlemen of England, who drink
Chateau-Yquem at ease, ah ! little do you think
upon such luxuries as these. Perhaps you need a
glass of Grande-Chartreuse for a " pick-me-up,"
after hearing of all this revelry—bread and treacle,
washed down with water, and a penny bottle of
ginger-beer, to make it more of a feast—with the
thermometer at 86 in the shade. We do not
know that there are any very weighty conclusions
to be drawn from all this; if there are, we can
only, like JEAN Pain somewhere, " advise you to
" draw them." But, knowing, as we all do,
what torments heat and thirst are, even when life
goes smoothly in other respects, we may be none
the worse for giving a thought to the stinted re-
sources of the hard-working poor in the matter of
drinks that should be refreshing and stimulating
without being apt to get quickly into the head.