Some of these boys are well beaten by their employers; this they put up with readily enough, if they experience kindness at the hands of the man’s wife; for, as I said before, parties that have never thought of marriage, if they live together, call one another husbands and wives.
In “working the country” these lads are put on the same footing as their masters, with whom they eat, drink, and sleep; but they do not gamble with them. A few, however, go out and tempt country boys to gamble, and--as an almost inevitable consequence--to lose. “Some of the boys,” said one who had seen it often, “will keep a number of countrymen in a beer-shop in a roar for the hour, while the countrymen ply them with beer, and some of the street-lads can drink a good deal. I’ve known three bits of boys order a pot of beer each, one after the other, each paying his share, and a quartern of gin each after that--drunk neat; they don’t understand water. Drink doesn’t seem to affect them as it does men. I don’t know why.” “Some costermongers,” said another informant, “have been known, when they’ve taken a fancy to a boy--I know of two--to dress him out like themselves, silk handkerchiefs and all; for if they didn’t find them silk handkerchiefs, the boys would soon get them out of their ‘_bunts_.’ They like silk handkerchiefs, for if they lose all their money gambling, they can then pledge their handkerchiefs.”
I have mentioned the term “_bunts_.” Bunts is the money made by the boys in this manner:--If a costermonger, after having sold a sufficiency, has 2_s._ or 3_s._ worth of goods left, and is anxious to get home, he says to the boy, “Work these streets, and bring me 2_s._ 6_d._ for the tol,” (lot) which the costermonger knows by his eye--for he seldom measures or counts--is easily worth that money. The lad then proceeds to sell the things entrusted to him, and often shows great ingenuity in so doing. If, for instance, turnips be tied up in penny bunches, the lad will open some of them, so as to spread them out to nearly twice their previous size, and if any one ask if that be a penn’orth, he will say, “Here’s a larger for 1-1/2_d._, marm,” and so palm off a penny bunch at 1-1/2_d._ Out of each bunch of onions he takes one or two, and makes an extra bunch. All that the lad can make in this way over the half-crown is his own, and called “bunts.” Boys have made from 6_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ “bunts,” and this day after day. Many of them will, in the course of their traffic, beg old boots or shoes, if they meet with better sort of people, and so “work it to rights,” as they call it among themselves; servants often give them cast-off clothes. It is seldom that a boy carries home less than the stipulated sum.