Free Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood

scurrying from Price and Jones’s loaded with redeemed pledges. Mrs Nattle, pushing with great dignity, a perambulator piled with bundles, three of Mrs Cranford’s children at her heels carrying the superflux. Mrs Dorbell, withered and threadbare, shuffling out of her stricken home talking to herself as she walked. Drawing alongside Harry she stopped, suddenly, and, interrupting her own conversation, exclaimed: ‘Eee! Ah’ve come out bout (without) me baskit!’ she about faced, shuffled into the house to reappear with an old basket on the crook of her arm. She trudged away talking to the pavement.
    Two handcarts, with attendants, stood in the middle of the street, the one selling cooked ribs, the other fish, and around the last swarmed nearly every cat in the neighbourhood, stalking, fawning round the fishmonger and his conveyance, tails in air or sitting on their backsides waiting the trimmings which he flung to them whenever he made a sale.
    A second-hand clothes dealer crying his trade, stopping by Blind Joe Riley who was standing puffing his pipe on his doorstep : ‘Any ole clo’es, mate?’
    ‘Aye, lad, all on ‘em,’ replied Joe, and went on puffing.
    Clothing-club collectors and insurance men, afoot or riding into the street on bicycles, knocking briskly upon the open doors, poking their heads within and shouting the name of the company or firm whom they represented.
    ‘Prudential, Mrs Jike.’
    ‘Good Samaritan, Mrs Bull.’ (The Good Samaritan was a clothing club owned by Mr Alderman Ezekiah Grumpole, a fat and greasy citizen who, also, was a money-lender.) The collectors withdrew their heads from the doorways, flourished pen or pencil in a businesslike manner, then beamed upon the tribes of dirty children standing or lying about the pavements, all of whom would have breathed more freely had they blown their noses. Afterwards, the hopeful collectors whistled or hummed tunes and surveyed the grey skies with such unconcern as suggested that the collection of money was the last thing in their minds.
    ‘Call next week, lad,’ from stout Mrs Bull, the local, uncertified midwife and layer out of the dead. She sat at her kitchen table, jug and glass at hand: ‘Call next week, lad. Ah broke teetotal last night,’ with assurance: ‘Ah’ll have it for y’ when y’ call agen. Mrs Cranford’s expectin’ o’ Tuesday, an’ owld Jack Tuttle won’t last week out. Eigh, igh, ho, hum! Poooor owld Jack,’ a guzzle at the glass.
    ‘But y’ missed payin’ last week, y’ know, Mrs Bull,’ plaintively, from the collector, scowling at the snotty-nosed children standing on the kerb endeavouring to ring the bell on his bicycle.
    ‘Aaach. … Get away wi’ y’,’ loudly, so that Mrs Cake, Mrs Bull’s mortal enemy standing on her doorstep across the street waiting the collector, heard every word. Mrs Cake curled her lip, shrugged her shoulders and displayed her payment book conspicuously as she heard Mrs Bull exclaim: ‘Tell owld Grumpole t’ put me i’ court,’ louder, as she glimpsed, through the window, Mrs Cake’s contemptuous expression: ‘An’ y’ can tell her wi’ lum - ba - go across street wot thinks she’s a lady that we ain’t all married to ‘usbands wots lets wife wear the trousers.’
    ‘Aye, it’s all right, Mrs Bull,’ sulkily, from the collector: ‘But y’ get me in trouble keep missin’ like this.’
    ‘Aach, trouble, eh? Tha’ll thrive on it when tha gets as owld as me.’
    The collector turned, grumbling, pushed his bike across the street, removed the scowl from his face to smile, unctuously, upon Mrs Cake, who, lips pursed, eyes a-glitter, handed over her book and money: ‘Some folks,’ she cried, loudly, staring at Mrs Bull’s open front door: ‘Some folks as could be named ain’t got principle of a louse,’ to the street, generally, as she received her book of the collector who prepared to ride away: ‘Fair play, that’s my motto. Owe nowt t’ nobody an’