archiwalia arch2

LONDON: The Crawlers: Adolphine Smith - "Huddled together on the workhouse steps in Short???s Gardens, those wrecks of humanity, the Crawlers of St. Giles???s, may be seen both day and night seeking mutual warmth and mutual consolation in their extreme misery. As a rule, they are old women reduced by vice and poverty to that degree of wretchedness which destroys even the energy to beg. They have not the strength to struggle for bread, and prefer starvation to the activity which an ordinary mendicant must display. As a natural consequence, they cannot obtain money for a lodging or for food. What little charity they receive is more frequently derived from the lowest orders. They beg from beggars, and the energetic, prosperous mendicant is in his turn called upon to give to those who are his inferiors in the ??sprofession.??? Stale bread, half-used tea-leaves, and on gala days, the fly-blown bone of a joint, are their principal items of diet. A broken jug, or a tea-pot without spout or handle, constitutes the domestic crockery. In this the stale tealeaves, or, perhaps, if one of the company has succeeded in begging a penny, a halfpenny-worth of new tea is carefully placed; then one of the women rises and crawls slowly towards Drury Lane, where there is a coffee-shop keeper and also a publican who take compassion on these women, and supply them gratuitously with boiling water. Warm tea is thus procured at a minimum cost, and the poor women???s lives prolonged. But old age, and want of proper food and rest, reduces them to a lethargic condition which can scarcely be preferable to death itself.??? INCREDIBLE colourised photos bring all aspects of Victorian London to life ??" including street sellers, child labourers, and busking musicians. The expertly colourised pictures, which were taken in the 1870s, the same decade that the famous British author Charles Dickens passed away, show a bustling London full of character ??" including flower women selling their wares at Cove