The Four Idols

 

Unusual Occupations.  The Crossing Sweeper

 

Before the advent of the motor car, travel was by horse-drawn vehicle, whether transporting people or goods.  In the mid-nineteenth century it is estimated that there were over 300,000 horses in London and that 1,000 tons of horse dung was dropped on the streets each day.   The streets were filthy with muck and all sorts of rubbish, caused not only by horses but also by cattle being driven through the streets to the livestock markets.   Crossing sweepers made a living sweeping road crossings, pavements and steps, clearing them of the foul mud and debris.

The crossing Sweepers job was to shovel the muck so that ladies with long dresses and delicate footwear and gentlemen in their fine raiment might cross without getting soiled.  As the job required very little outlay it was an obvious choice for the very poor.  The job, which was done by children and the aged and infirm was regarded as the lowest form of working for an income, just above begging.  Children sweepers often worked in gangs and shared their earnings at the end of the day,  gang wars often broke out between groups trying to take over each others patches.

City residents had mixed views about crossing sweeping, some regarded it as little more than make-believe of work as a pretext for begging, others believed it legitimate  providing a useful service.   A comment in The Art Journal of 1864 noted that crossing sweepers “are of a different class from the pickpocket and vagrant classes who prowl about to make what prizes fall within their reach.”

As residents increasingly complained about the nuisance of begging children,  the local powers tried to remove them from the streets and in 1882 a lady pedestrian wrote “A few years ago there were many children and men who turned out immediately after a snowfall, brushing the crossings as clean as they could.  For this service many gladly gave a few coins, regarding the sweepers not as beggars or vagrants, but as labourers whose hard and disagreeable work enabled well-shod people to pass on their way.”

In the second half of the nineteenth century various journalists researched the life of the crossing sweeper, the principal one being Henry Mayhew (1812-1887).  He was editor of the magazine Punch and well known as a social researcher, publishing many articles which were later compiled into “London Labour and the London Poor”.

A piece in the Edinburgh Journal in 1852 listed seven types of sweepers found on London streets,  professional, morning, occasional, Sunday, deformed maimed and crippled sweeper and female, who plied their trade with varying degrees of skill, effort and financial success.

Henry Mayhew referred to casual and regular sweepers, the casuals only working some days of the week and at various different places whilst the regulars swept one particular crossing every day.  Residents had differing attitudes to crossing sweepers, some considering them little better than beggars whilst others viewed them as legitimate workers providing a useful service which was missed when absent.

The occupation of Crossing Sweeper is recorded in Charles Dickens novel Bleak House where  “Jo fights it at his crossing among the mud and wheels, the horses, whips and umbrellas and gets but a scanty sum.”  Jo  was one of the most significant figures in the novel and was a way for Dickens to address juvenile vagrancy which was a serious problem at the time.

The introduction of the omnibus  onto London’s streets during the late nineteenth century  meant that Londoners were able jump onto a bus and avoid walking on the dirty street and in 1902 the first motorised bus was introduced.  The motorisation of buses, followed by commercial vehicles, rapidly lowered the number of horses on the streets and the occupation of crossing sweeper became obsolete.