The Daily Grind: T. Sparrow, Olive Christian Malvery and the World of Work

Seaber, Luke

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-50962-4_5

Luke Seaber⁴

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Life Writing ((PSLW))

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Abstract

This chapter explores how journalists, usually women, explored the world of low-paid work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The most important form of this involved organ-grinding, and the two most important figures are T. Sparrow and Olive Christian Malvery. The former demonstrates some of the most emic texts dealt with in this study, whereas the latter’s various prejudices lead her into contradictions that reveal her to be willing to ignore the evidence that she herself puts forward in order to further her etic agenda.

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Notes

1.
Orwell, George. 1997 [1933]. Down and Out in Paris and London [The Complete Works of George Orwell, ed. Peter Davison, vol. 1]. London: Secker & Warburg, pp. 174–75.
2.
Ibid., p. 174.
3.
It is in fact distinctly rarer than its image in fiction and the public imagination might suggest. I am aware of two examples: ‘Begging in the Streets of London. – I’. The Echo 9 January 1884, p. 1 and ‘Begging in the Streets of London. – II’ The Echo 10 January 1884, p. 1, and ‘A Day as a Professional Beggar’. Tit-Bits, 17 January 1891, p. 232.
4.
Regarding the story’s relationship with the journalism of the day, see Calami, Peter. 1999. ‘Art Imitates Life: Participant-Observer Journalism and The Man with the Twisted Lip’. Unpublished lecture notes, Toronto Public Library, call no. 823.91 D598 B575 V. 22, NO. 8, and Jaffe, Audrey. 1990. ‘Detecting the Beggar: Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry Mayhew, and “The Man with the Twisted Lip”’. Representations 31, pp. 96–117. For a more general overview of Sherlock Holmes’s relationship with social investigation, see Seaber, Luke. Forthcoming. ‘“Many Acquaintances, and Those in the Most Different Classes of Society”: Sherlock Holmes as Social Investigator’ in Tom Ue (ed.) Mapping Arthur Conan Doyle’s Modernities: 1887–1929. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
5.
The partial exception to this last point is Stephen Reynolds, but he is a highly anomalous figure.
6.
See Vorachek, Laura. 2012. ‘Playing Italian: Cross-Cultural Dress and Investigative Journalism at the Fin de Siècle’. Victorian Periodicals Review 45:4, pp. 406–35, pp. 408–10.
7.
Bright, Eva. 1894. ‘How the Other Half Lives: The Organ-Grinder’. English Illustrated Magazine 11, pp. 1007–12.
8.
Sparrow, T. 1894. ‘London Street Toilers’. Newbery House Magazine 2, pp. 248–55. Hereafter cited as ‘Organ-Grinders’ to avoid confusion with her other piece for the Newbery House Magazine, ‘London Street Toilers: Cress Sellers’.
9.
Bourne, Frances. 1900. ‘A Lady’s Experiences as an Organ-Grinder’. English Illustrated Magazine 24, pp. 18–24.
10.
Malvery, Olive Christian. 1905. ‘The Heart of Things. IV. – Music in the Byways’. Pearson’s Magazine 19, pp. 149–57. This is contained in Malvery, Olive Christian. 1907 [1906]. The Soul Market, with Which Is Included ‘The Heart of Things’. London: Hutchinson & Co., which is the edition that will be cited here.
11.
As to why the ten years in question witnessed this phenomenon, see Vorachek, ‘Playing Italian’.
12.
Vorachek, ‘Playing Italian’, p. 408.
13.
Ibid., p. 407.
14.
Bright, ‘How the Other Half Lives’, p. 1007. ‘Alnaschar’ refers to a story from the Thousand and One Nights; one wonders if this is criticism of the Telegraph’s stance, as Alnaschar’s wealth was purely illusory…
15.
Ibid., p. 1012.
16.
Ibid., p. 1009.
17.
Ibid., p. 1007.
18.
Bourne, ‘A Lady’s Experiences’, p. 18.
19.
Ibid., p. 22.
20.
Sparrow, ‘Organ-Grinders’, p. 248.
21.
‘Further investigation warming me to my work’. Ibid.
22.
Ibid.
23.
Ibid.
24.
Ibid.
25.
Ibid., p. 251. Italics mine.
26.
Ibid.
27.
Ibid.
28.
Ibid.
29.
See Pasolini, Pier Paolo. 1976. Lettere luterane. Turin: Giulio Einaudi, p. 23.
30.
Sparrow, ‘Organ-Grinders’, pp. 253–54.
31.
See too her comment on one of the things that she learnt in her week as an organ-grinder, ‘[I] had increased my vocabulary of abuse’ (p. 252): she has learnt more ways to swear, and this is presented as a simple fact rather than as a moral judgement on the iniquities of the poor or a reflection on their freedom of speech as opposed to a middle-class reticence.
32.
Ibid., p. 254.
33.
Sparrow, T. 1894. ‘London Street Toilers: Cress Sellers’. Newbery House Magazine 9, pp. 489–494, p. 489.
34.
Ibid., p. 492.
35.
Ibid., p. 493.
36.
Ibid.
37.
Sparrow, T. 1896. ‘The Penniless Poor: A Doss-House near the Docks’. Quiver 31, pp. 68–71, p. 69.
38.
Ibid.
39.
Sparrow, T. 1897. ‘The Cry of the Canal Children’. Quiver 32, pp. 366–9, p. 366.
40.
Sparrow, T. 1895. ‘As One of the Penniless Poor: I. – Palm-Workers’. Quiver 30, pp. 225–8, p. 225.
41.
Ibid.
42.
Ibid., pp. 225–6.
43.
See Toynbee, Polly. 1971. A Working Life. London: Hodder and Stoughton, p. 157.
44.
See ‘Mass-Observation’ [Celia Fremlin]. 1987 [1943]. War Factory. London: The Cresset Library.
45.
See Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2011 [2001]. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. New York: Picador.
46.
Ibid., p. 228.
47.
Sparrow, T. 1895. ‘In the Heart of Hop-Land’. Strand Magazine 10, pp. 450–6, p. 451.
48.
Ibid., p. 450.
49.
Ibid., pp. 455–6.
50.
Ibid., p. 456.
51.
Ibid., p. 453.
52.
All quotations and information following come from London, British Library, Loan 96 RLF 1 2916. I owe knowledge of the fact that Sparrow had applied to the Royal Literary Fund to Cross, Nigel. 1980. A Select Catalogue of Applicants to the Royal Literary Fund 1790–1870 with a Historical Introduction. Unpublished PhD thesis, University College London, no page number.
53.
A further level of explanation for the fact that Sparrow did not keep up the superlative level of work evident in the pieces discussed here is to be found in Laura Vorachek’s suggestion that Sparrow’s consciousness of her middle-class status and the possibility that the ‘feminine clique’ against her was motivated by a sense that certain journalistic ‘tricks’ were below her class dignity. Vorachek, Laura. 2016. ‘“How Little I Cared for Fame”: T. Sparrow and Women’s Investigative Journalism at the Fin de Siècle’. Victorian Periodicals Review 49:2, pp. 333–61, pp. 350–1.
54.
Walkowitz, Judith R. 1998/1999. ‘The Indian Woman, the Flower Girl, and the Jew: Photojournalism in Edwardian London’. Victorian Studies 42:1, pp. 3–46, p. 7.
55.
Ibid.
56.
Malvery, Soul Market, pp. 202–3.
57.
Walkowitz, ‘The Indian Woman, the Flower Girl, and the Jew’, p. 5.
58.
Malvery, Soul Market, p. 90.
59.
Walkowitz, ‘The Indian Woman, the Flower Girl, and the Jew’, p. 8.
60.
Malvery’s strong eticity – or, in this case, more simply, her uncomprehending disdain (the term is not too strong) of those amongst whom she temporarily lives – can also be clearly seen when she talks of working-class eating habits. The best example of this comes in her first costering experiment, when she writes ‘I always kept some meat lozenges and Plasmon biscuits [a renowned health food of the early twentieth century] in my pocket, and so managed to escape with very small quantities of the food taken by the people with whom I lived’ – the use of so loaded a verb as ‘escape’ is remarkable – before going on to note that she has ‘never met a coster girl or a factory girl who could cook decently’ and relating her attempts to teach her hosts how to cook and her success in introducing cinnamon into their lives (Malvery, Soul Market, pp. 138–9). This speaks for itself.
61.
Ibid., p. 197.
62.
Ibid., p. 33.
63.
Ibid., p. 164.
64.
Ibid., p. 134.
65.
Ibid. On Malvery’s ‘foreign appearance’, see Walkowitz, ‘The Indian Woman, the Flower Girl, and the Jew’, passim, especially p. 8.
66.
Malvery, Soul Market, p. 142.
67.
Walkowitz, ‘The Indian Woman, the Flower Girl, and the Jew’, p. 10.
68.
Malvery, Soul Market, pp. 142–3.
69.
Ibid., p. 158.
70.
Ibid., pp. 156–7.
71.
Ibid., p. 157.
72.
Ibid., p. 155.
73.
Ibid.
74.
Ibid., p. 158.
75.
Ibid., pp. 158–9.
76.
Ibid., p. 159.
77.
Ibid., p. 161. Fittingly, and rather hilariously, Malvery’s remonstrance is met with an indignant instruction to mind her place and not interfere with her betters. She does not seize the opportunity to adduce this as an example of the impenetrability of her disguise…
78.
Ibid., pp. 159–60.
79.
Ibid., p. 160.
80.
Ibid., p. 156.
81.
Ibid., p. 160.
82.
Ibid.

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Seaber, L. (2017). The Daily Grind: T. Sparrow, Olive Christian Malvery and the World of Work. In: Incognito Social Investigation in British Literature. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50962-4_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50962-4_5
Published: 29 March 2017
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-50962-4
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