Page 204 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

Organ-grinders, like acrobats, are considered artists
rather than beggars. An organ-grinder named Shorty,
a friend of Bozo’s, told me all about his trade. He and his
mate ‘worked’ the coffee-shops and public-houses round
Whitechapel and the Commercial Road. It is a mistake to
think that organ-grinders earn their living in the street;
nine-tenths of their money is taken in coffee-shops and
pubs—only the cheap pubs, for they are not allowed into
the good-class ones. Shorty’s procedure was to stop out-
side a pub and play one tune, after which his mate, who
had a wooden leg and could excite compassion, went in and
passed round the hat. It was a point of honour with Shorty
always to play another tune after receiving the ‘drop’—an
encore, as it were; the idea being that he was a genuine en-
tertainer and not merely paid to go away. He and his mate
took two or three pounds a week between them, but, as they
had to pay fifteen shillings a week for the hire of the organ,
they only averaged a pound a week each. They were on the
streets from eight in the morning till ten at night, and later
on Saturdays.
Screevers can sometimes be called artists, sometimes
not. Bozo introduced me to one who was a ‘real’ artist—that
is, he had studied art in Paris and submitted pictures to the
Salon in his day. His line was copies of Old Masters, which
he did marvellously, considering that he was drawing on
stone. He told me how he began as a screever:
‘My wife and kids Were starving. I was walking home late
at night, with a lot of drawings I’d been taking round the
dealers, and wondering how the devil to raise a bob or two.

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