The Sun.
London, England, 1863-03-09 00:00:00

THE SHOEBLACKS OF LONDON.

To spend £6,228 is much easier than to earn that I
sum by honest labour. Yet this is the amount gained
in pennies during the past year in the streets by the
374 bays of the London Shoeblack Brigades. But
a far deeper interest is excited when such commer-
cial prosperity is seen to be only one phase of an
effort to combine religious education with remunera-
tive employment, and to give this double benefit to
homeless children, that they may hereafter work and
behave and live as honest citizens of a Christian
'find. The first shoeblack society was begun in
March, 1851, in preparation for the Exhibition of
that year. Seven other societies have since sprung
up, and the movement is still expanding. All these
societies are managed on precisely the same plan,
though by distinct committees, and they are re-
stricted to certain districts by a spit of " congress of
shoeblacks," which gravely mapped out London,
painting the frontiers with the red, blue, yellow,
brown, and other colours of the various uniforms.
Besides these there is a society for Roman Catholics,

differently managed, and there are also the parish
shoeblacks, not in allegiance to any society, undis-
ciplined, vagrant, and troublesome—the " free-
h)oters," as they may be called—who prefer the
licence of the idler with small gains to the strict
rule and larger earniegs of the legalised system.
The original Shoeblack Brigade has its head-quarters
near Temple-bar, in a large house paid for by the
boys themselves, with every other expense ; tor this
society has been for several years entirely self-sup-
porting. About 1,300 young lads have been sent
out and started in life by the agency of this one
society, which employs at present 74 boys, who
earned last year £1,824. These wear a red uniform,
and are managed by then lawyers in the Temple
and Lincoln's Inn, who, without a patron or a
chairman, have carried on the work for 12 years in
perfect harmony. They have regulated the sav-
ings and investments of all the earnings of their
proteges, amounting to more than £17,000. The
boys employed by this society are selected from 20
ragged-schools in the district, and each of them
continues his attendance at the particular school
every day after his work, as well as on Sundays,
affording a good example to his schoolmates and an
object of abiding interest to the teacher of his class.
Before eight o'clock in the morning you will find
all these happy little fellows, neat and clean, in the
society's great room, where a hymn is sung, and a
short prayer is offered. Fortified with hot coffee
and other things for the " inner boy," they march
to their stations, and, if it is a sunny day, they ply
a busy trade. Nobody cares to have his boots
cleaned while it rains, but fair weather encourages
the suggestion, " Clean your boots, Sir ?" from a
smart little lad, with one hand to his cap and the
other pointing to your dirty shoes. The charge
for this operation is one penny, but there was a
case in which a man with a wooden leg claimed
and was allowed his legal right to compound by
paying a halfpenny. The society's officers visit
every station frequently, and supply blacking to the
industrious, or bestow reproof on the idle, until
about six o'clock, when all the boys return with
their earnings, and soon fill up a great bowl with
copper money, among which are often found some
foreign francs and cents. Part of what each boy
brings in is paid to himself, part is laid by for him
in his bank, and part is retained for the expenses
of the society. It is thus that each lad is taught
to earn, to spend, and to save money with honesty,
care, and providence. Many of them keep adding
to their store until £2O is hoarded, but from time
to time they draw on their "bank," to help a
mother's poverty or a sister's sickness, or to sport
the vanity of a "bran new waistcoat with blue-glass
buttons." The sights and sounds that encompass
these shoeblacks, stationed all day in the most pro-
minent outposts of our streets, and keenly on the
look-out and listening all the time, supply plenty
of gossip for their meeting again at night, which is
always a merry meeting. Down they go to a lava-
tory, where, at a dozen basins, amidst great fun
and frolic, they wash the " outer boy," in prepara-
tion for a hungry attack on the supper table. They
have pictures and periodicals, draughts and dominoes
placed on the table for their amusement, as they talk
and eat and play ; and then they all hie off to even-
ing school. A visit to the depot of one of these socie-
ties enables us to judge of the cheerful character
of the boy-life of the shoeblacks; but the annual
treat, when all the societies assemble in new bright,
uniforms, is quite an hilarious scene. The Free-
masons'-hall was filled last week with their tea-
party. They mustered in their several colours.
Each society waved its banner as proudly as a city
guild, and the crest of the "old reds" was a black-
ing-bottle borne on high. Two of the boys' bands
drummed and fifed the regiments into line of battle,
for a grand charge of the mounds of cake ; and the
number of drummers in the bands of the Guards
who have been imported from these societies indi-
cates that their music is by no means only fit for
playtime. Such are the occasional festivities of the
London Shoeblack Brigade. One of the speakers
at this meeting—Lord Charles Russell—began by
telling the boys, "I was once a shoeblack myself,
bat there was this difference between my shoe-
blacking at Westminster School and yours,—that
you always get a penny for your work, whereas
often I had only a kick for my pains, and that too
from the very boot I had polished." It must be a
very dull heart that could be present on an occasion
like this without rejoicing that to so many children,
who else would be running wild, or perhaps be
driven along the broad path to crime and misery, a
new path is open to industry and happiness, and
that now it may be truly said, "No boys with
hands to work need starve in an English town." It
is el, ident that a shoeblack's occupation is only a
temporary means of subsistence, by which he may
live while he learns, and may acquire habits of in-
dustry and earn a character that fits him for regular
work lay life. Hundreds of these boys are thus
every year enabled to enter the army and navy, and
to become domestic servants or errand boys, or to
emigrate to wider fields of labour in the colonies.
Many of them write to the society from all parts of
the world, remembering with gratitude the share
it has had in saving them from ruin, the kind-
ness of the committee, the pleas=ant evenings
with the magic-lantern: the country excursions,
the schooling and discipline, the rewards—
nay, the punishments of their sboeblack days
—and more than all, the gentle influence of their
Sunday-school. Failures there ale, no doubt,
both numerous and grave, but in what effort of
social reform can we hay there are not? Year by
year, however, the success of this sykem of ma-
naging the street boys has increased, and the ma•
nagers, who claim a right to speak from experience,
assure us of the fact that the London shoeblacks are
a signal instance of the happy fruits of that prac-
tical Christian benevo:ence which gives work, and
food, and learning, and home to the outcast, while
it cheers the desolate heart with the love of a friend
to the friendless.—London Review.