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INFANT SEAMSTBESSES- 81
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Into One Of Those Narrow, Gloomy Streets...
necessary , " you say . Ah ! madam , if you had only one pleasant thing to look upon in this worldyou don't know how careful you
children would be were , lest dep any lorabl of its y neg comeliness lected , , and should seemed be , lost poor . things Other , of to the be
aware of their inferiority ; yet these , we learned , boasted better rations than the decenter children , their parents being costermongers
or something of the sort . Finding that none of them were being that taught we to had read made , we a hinted mistake at . the The ragged old school woman , but kindled we soon in a found moment out :
" they were a little above that ; their mothers" —it was all the mothersfathers they miht never have known—" would be very sorry
to let them , mis with g such raff . " But we have not finished our sketch .
A child about four years of age , whose feet were naked and who was in a very dirty condition , sat on the floor , against the wall , all
this time without having uttered a sentence . Such a countenance in a child we had never beheld . It had a moody expression ;
something like a dash of despair . The child looked from one to another without the least apparent interestor any variation of expression .
Not even the mention of the canary , , which had so suddenly excited all the rest , had the least effect upon it . It was not sewing , for it
was a cripple , having fallen into the fire in the absence of its to p mother inion the . wrist . There The ; the was right inner a dreadful arm part was scar of drawn the which arm up extended stiffl seemed y like from to a have closel the shoulder escaped y-folded ,
and had a peculiar corrugated appearance . Oh ! what suffering had been compressed within that small span of existence ! Nor was this allattempting to walk by the wall she staggered and fell
then rose ; on and walkedand staggered again . The old woman in- , , formed us that her legs , were worse burnt than her arm , and were
_^ a " drawed crutchas up she uneven " went , " and round for it that . " reason The parents she could of this do nothing child " were with
not , " the old woman saidbut were both habitual drunkards . It was poor the , father whose jargon , in an adjoining apartment we have
alluded to . We discovered that the poor old seamstress took care of And this child then , and she went in fact on almost detailing kept a it . number of the most horrible
hood incidents to , children frightful whose accidents mother , which s were had occurred with in a the coolness neighbour that - away
we was were could startling as well hardl there ; y and hel as p sad admitting anywhere as was the else that case , except under of the school the , infant circumstances , and seamstresses that seemed , they ,
impossible in most instances . Of various , inevitable evils it seemed that the mothers had chosen the least . The twelve sewers , we
learned , got through about three dozen shirts weekly . Out of the seven and sixpence thus earnedthe old woman paid the oldest girl
eighteen-pence , and found coffee , for the others . She also found
thread , etc ., of course , for the work , and , as we . have seen , had the
Infant Seamstbesses- 81
INFANT SEAMSTBESSES- 81
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Sept. 1, 1859, page 31, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01091859/page/31/
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