Punch: Punch (15.1848)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

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THE IRISH ABD-EL-KADER.

et us hope Smith O'Brien will be taken before
these remarks fall into the public hands, or
rather get into the public eye: for if he is
not captured, we shall begin to look upon
Smith O'Brien as a sort of Abd-el-Kader
whom everybody sees, but nobody seizes.
Every day last week brought accounts of his
having walked up to, parleyed with, and walked
away from the very persons who were in pursuit
of him, and to whom it never occurred that it
would have been as well to have collared him
at once, instead of indulging in small talk.
The whole business has been beautifully Irish ;
for when Smith O'Brien and the authorities
have met, the latter have usually considered
themselves the obliged parties by being allowed
to go about their business; 'and the former
has made quite a merit of civilly permitting them to depart without
opposition. He has been walking up to officers and others, with
pistols in his hand, and walking off again as coolly as possible, while
on other occasions he has been equally potent, with no other weapon
than a walking-stick. At one place he seems not merely to have
deliberately bid his pursuers good bye, but to have helped himself
to one of their horses in order to accelerate his departure, while
the police quietly looked on and allowed him to evaporate.

We wonder that the Inspector did not send one of his men to call a
cab for Smith O'Brien, to convey him to the nearest railway station,
and enable him to make good his retreat with the utmost speed ; or fetch
him a Bradshatc, that he might take his choice of routes, and select the
one that would most effectually baffle his pursuers. One would think
that the book of etiquette, rather than the Articles of War or the Govern-
ment Proclamations, had been the guide adopted by the authorities in
their dealings with Mr. Smith O'Brien : it has been a sort of " how
d'ye do," and " good bye," between him and the soldiery, whenever
they have come into each other's presence. A little dialogue has
occasionally ensued, in the course of which the officer in command has
given his word of honour that he has had no warrant to arrest Smith
O'Brien ; and, after a few further exchanges of courtesies, the interview
has usually ended by the parties walking off in opposite directions.

THE CHEAP SHIRT MARKET.

It is a golden rule, doubtless, to buy in the cheapest market. But
the cheapest market is sometimes a foul place. The cheapest sugar is

for materials. We are left to wonder what stuff such shirts are made of,
and till we know we cannot tell what the vender gets, and are unable to
say what he deserves. It is not, we are happy to say, our intention to
deal with him, but with his customers. The clerk, to his foregoing
statement, added that—

" The competition in such business was so great that his employers, Messrs. Moski.
and Son, could not afford to pay more than the present rate."

It is the purchaser, therefore, rather than the seller of cheap shirts,
that is the task-master, the Pharaoh, of such as Emma Mounser. These
are the gentlemen who save in linen, to the starvation, demoralisation,
and destruction of needle-women. Such trifling- considerations cannot
be expected to arrest them in rushing to the Cheap Clothes Mart. It
is, nevertheless, in their power to plunge into a yet lower depth ol
parsimony. The organisation of stinginess would enable them to-
procure shirts at prices still more ridiculous. By judicious combination
they might grind the shirt-makers without the intervention of a
middle-man. There was once a Society called the Dirty Shirt Cluo.
Suppose they form an Association with that truly appropriate epithet.
In the mean time, those who would unite comfort—of conscience as well
as of back—with economy, will, perhaps, avoid the slop-shop, employ
their own workwomen, and pay them decently; their shirts neither
pinching them, nor they the shirt-maker.

EMIGRATION FOR THE UPPER CLASSES,

The Lords have been complaining bitterly of having nothing to do-
in their own House, in consequence of the little work that has been cut
out for them this Session by the Commons. Lord Brougham has
done his utmost to find a vent for his superfluous energy, and has-
been trying Legal lteform as a safety-valve, though without much effect,,
that which is slave-grown Ihe cheapest fire-irons are tc.behad at the for he has been almost constantly on the fiz and fume without being

™"™?:^le.*k^?fri!v 1 !LC he?e!Ll™e° "?"5l!?!r * *£? ^02:! able to go a-head by the aid of his vapour. We recommend their Lord-
ships to try emigration, the great remedy of the day, which, during.
♦ he recess, they might resort to very beneficially. They have been-
lately merely dummies in the game of life; but if they were to suit
themselves with spades, they might turn up regular trumps in some
distant colony. We do not recommend permanent expatriation to the'
peers ; but after the ennui of this do-nothing Session, we are sure they
might find both health and amusement abroad, in the enercise of ft
little manual labour.

shop—at what cost let us see. A recent police report in the Times
informs us that, at Lambeth—

" Emma Modnser, a wretched-looking woman, but who, from her manner, had
evidently seen much better days, was broueht up for final examination, before Ma.
Norton, on the charge of unlawfully pawning seventeen shirts, the property of
Messrs. Moses and Son, Aldgate. . . . The prisoner did not deny pawning the
shirts, but said she had been driven to the act by sheer necessity. Her husband,
who was a printer, she raid was out of employment, as well as her son and her
daughter, and all, at this particular time, were dependent on the wretched pittance
which she made by shirt-making."

It may seem a difficult task to feed four mouths with a needle, yet
that of Emma Mounser mi^ht have served as a fork to administer the
food which it earned. Mr. Norton inquired of the accused—

" What were you paid for making these shirts ? "
"Prisoner.—is. 6d. a dozen, jour Worship, or 2\d. apiece."

Now, to support herself and family at this rate, Emma Mounser
must have possessed the productiveness of a steam-engine, and even
then her frame—albeit of iron—would have been overworked. But,
the magistrate asking how much she had been able to earn a day at
such work—

" The prisoner replied that the utmost she could do in the day was to make two
shirts, and deducting from them the price of the thread, cotton, and needles, all of
which she was to find herself, she could not make more than id. a day."

She was, then, required to make shirts, and, out of her destitution,
to supply the thread. There was a certain monarch who obliged his
subjects to make bricks, and gave them no straw. Is it necessary that
we should mention this historical fact to Moses ? But Moses, it must
in fairness be remembered, is a seller as well as a buyer in the cheap
market. A clerk in the Aldgate establishment was in attendance, and
Mr. Norton demanded of him what were the prices of the shirts thus
economically produced ?—

'* The person alluded to said the wholesale price was twelve shillings a dozen, or
one shilling apiece."

So the work of each shirt costs 1\d., and the article sells at Is.; the
difference between which sums is 9£(i, subject to a certain deduction

apology for the shell-jacket.

Much as the shell-jacket may be objected to as a disfigurement ts
the British officer, it is, unquestionably, an excellent coat for action*
as the wearer will certainly never show the enemy his back.