Home / Albums / Keyword Occupations 190
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Three people making hats in the middle ages. One appears to be a child.
874 visits
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Group of Goldsmiths preceding the Chasse de St. Marcel in the Reign of Louis XIII.--From a Copper-plate of the Period (Cabinet of Stamps in the National Library of Paris).
757 visits
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Goldsmith
733 visits
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Goldbeater
674 visits
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Dice maker
570 visits
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Conveyance of Fish by Water and Land.--Fac-simile of an Engraving in the Royal Statutes of the Provostship of Merchants, 1528.
875 visits
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Cloth Worker
Fac-simile of Engravings on Wood, designed and engraved by J. Amman, in the Sixteenth Century.
1435 visits
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Robert E. Lee, Lieut. of Engineers.
In 1829, when twenty-two years old, Robert entered the Engineer Corps of the United States, and thus became Lieutenant Lee.
It is the duty of these engineers in time of peace, to plan forts, to change the course of rivers which make sand-banks at wrong places, and to do other work of the same kind.
4578 visits
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Ethiopan Serenaders
The Street Vocalists are almost as large a body as the street musicians. It will be seen that there are 50 Ethiopian serenaders, and above 250 who live by ballad-singing alone.
596 visits
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Guy Fawkes
The character of Guy Fawkes-day has entirely changed. It seems now to partake rather of the nature of a London May-day. The figures have grown to be of gigantic stature, and whilst clowns, musicians, and dancers have got to accompany them in their travels through the streets, the traitor Fawkes seems to have been almost laid aside, and the festive occasion taken advantage of for the expression of any political feeling, the guy being made to represent any celebrity of the day who has for the moment offended against the opinions of the people. The kitchen-chair has been changed to the costermongers’ donkey-truck, or even vans drawn by pairs of horses. The bonfires and fireworks are seldom indulged in; the money given to the exhibitors being shared among the projectors at night, the same as if the day’s work had been occupied with acrobating
408 visits
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Jack Black - Her Majesty's Rat Catcher
In the sporting world, and among his regular customers, the Queen’s ratcatcher is better known by the name of Jack Black. He enjoys the reputation of being the most fearless handler of rats of any man living, playing with them—as one man expressed it to me—“as if they were so many blind kittens.”
1560 visits
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Street Telescope Exhibitor
“It must be about eight years since I first exhibited the telescope. I have three telescopes now, and their powers vary from about 36 to 300. The instruments of the higher power are seldom used in the streets, because the velocity of the planets is so great that they almost escape the eye before it can fix it. The opening is so very small, that though I can pass my eye on a star in a minute, an ordinary observer would have the orb pass away before he could accustom his eye to the instrument. High power is all very well for separating stars, and so forth; but I’m like Dr. Kitchener, I prefer a low power for street purposes. A street-passer likes to see plenty of margin round a star. If it fills up the opening he don’t like it.
1827 visits
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Street Performers on Stilts
1970 visits
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Street Conjurer Performing
1818 visits
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Street Acrobats performing
433 visits
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Punches Showmen
427 visits
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Photographic Saloon, East end of London
316 visits
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The well-known Hurdy-Gurdy player
One of the most deserving and peculiar of the street musicians was an old lady who played upon a hurdy-gurdy. She had been about the streets of London for upwards of forty years, and being blind, had had during that period four guides, and worn out three instruments. Her cheerfulness, considering her privation and precarious mode of life, was extraordinary. Her love of truth, and the extreme simplicity of her nature, were almost childlike. Like the generality of blind people, she had a deep sense of religion, and her charity for a woman in her station of life was something marvellous; for, though living on alms, she herself had, I was told, two or three little pensioners.
1091 visits
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Flushing the Sewers
The next step in our inquiry—and that which at present concerns us more than any other—is the mode of removing the solid deposits from the sewers, as well as the condition of the workmen connected with that particular branch of labour. The sewers are the means by which a larger proportion of the wet refuse of the metropolis is removed from our houses, and we have now to consider the means by which the more solid part of this refuse is removed from the sewers themselves. The latter operation is quite as essential to health and cleanliness as the former; for to allow the filth to collect in the channels which are intended to remove it, and there to remain decomposing and vitiating the atmosphere of the metropolis, is manifestly as bad as not to remove it at all; and since the more solid portions of the sewage will collect and form hard deposits at the bottom of each duct, it becomes necessary that some means should be devised for the periodical purgation of the sewers themselves.
1718 visits
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The Old-Clothes Man
Fifty years ago the appearance of the street-Jews, engaged in the purchase of second-hand clothes, was different to what it is at the present time. The Jew then had far more of the distinctive garb and aspect of a foreigner. He not unfrequently wore the gabardine, which is never seen now in the streets, but some of the long loose frock coats worn by the Jew clothes’ buyers resemble it. At that period, too, the Jew’s long beard was far more distinctive than it is in this hirsute generation.
In other respects the street-Jew is unchanged. Now, as during the last century, he traverses every street, square, and road, with the monotonous cry, sometimes like a bleat, of “Clo’! Clo’!”
1340 visits
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The London Sweep
Or, to check the estimate another way, there are 350 master sweepers throughout London. A master sweeper in a “large way of business” collects, I am informed, one day with another, from 30 to 40 bushels of soot; on the other hand, a small master, or “single-handed” chimney-sweeper is able to gather only about 5 bushels, and scarcely that. One master sweeper said that about 10 bushels a day would, he thought, be a fair average quantity for all the masters, reckoning one day with another; so that at this rate we should have 1,095,500 bushels for the gross quantity of soot annually collected throughout the metropolis.
1746 visits
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The Crossing sweeper that has been a maid servant
She is to be found any day between eight in the morning and seven in the evening, sweeping away in a convulsive, jerky sort of manner, close to —— square, near the Foundling. She may be known by her pinched-up straw bonnet, with a broad, faded, almost colourless ribbon. She has weak eyes, and wears over them a brownish shade. Her face is tied up, because of a gathering which she has on her head. She wears a small, old plaid cloak, a clean checked apron, and a tidy printed gown.
1748 visits
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The Boy Crossing Sweepers
2002 visits
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The Bearded Crossing sweeper at the Exchange
That portion of the London street-folk who earn a scanty living by sweeping crossings constitute a large class of the Metropolitan poor. We can scarcely walk along a street of any extent, or pass through a square of the least pretensions to “gentility,” without meeting one or more of these private scavengers. Crossing-sweeping seems to be one of those occupations which are resorted to as an excuse for begging; and, indeed, as many expressed it to me, “it was the last chance left of obtaining an honest crust.”
The advantages of crossing-sweeping as a means of livelihood seem to be:
1st, the smallness of the capital required in order to commence the business;
2ndly, the excuse the apparent occupation it affords for soliciting gratuities without being considered in the light of a street-beggar;
And 3rdly, the benefits arising from being constantly seen in the same place, and thus exciting the sympathy of the neighbouring householders, till small weekly allowances or “pensions” are obtained.
1630 visits
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One of the few remaining climbing sweeps
1465 visits
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London Nightmen
Nightmen, or those who remove the contents of the cesspools.
1626 visits
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The One-legged sweeper at Chancery Lane
1343 visits
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Young man standing with his porter basket.
The payments of ticket-porters were settled in 1799.
To or from any of the quays, wharfs, stairs, lanes, or alleys at the waterside, between the Tower and London Bridge to any part of Lower Thames-street, Beer-lane, Water-lane, Harp-lane, St. Dunstan’s-hill, St. Mary-hill, Love-lane, Botolph-lane, Pudding-lane, and Fish-street-hill:
For any load or parcel by knot or hand—
Not exceeding ½ cwt. 0s. 4d.
Not exceeding 1 „ 0 6
Not exceeding 1½ „ 0 9
Not exceeding 2 „ 1 0
1697 visits
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Convicts who have been sentenced to prison, but are released early under the ticket-to-leave experimental scheme.
2284 visits
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The Sewer-hunter
The sewer-hunters are again distinct, and a far more intelligent and adventurous class; but they work in gangs. They must be familiar with the course of the tides, or they might be drowned at high water. They must have quick eyes too, not merely to descry the objects of their search, but to mark the points and bearings of the subterraneous roads they traverse; in a word, “to know their way underground.” There is, moreover, some spirit of daring in venturing into a dark, solitary sewer, the chart being only in the memory, and in braving the possibility of noxious vapours, and the by no means insignificant dangers of the rats infesting these places.
1824 visits
