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Updated: June 15, 2025
In later times Italian organ-grinders and ice-cream vendors had a special predilection for the place, and did not add to its reputation. Curiously enough, the resident population of the neighbourhood are now almost wholly British, with very few Italians, as the majority of the foreigners have gone to join the colony just outside the Liberty, in Eyre Street Hill, Skinner's Street, etc.
He was pleased with the novelty of the idea, and as he happened to be then going the round of the town previously to visiting the course, I cast in my lot with him for the night. We first visited what he termed the "German Opera," on Epsom Common. This is an encampment of organ-grinders, hurdy-gurdy-players, German bands, &c., who pitch their tents here instead of going to the Downs.
Even the old organ brought her back to me, for she was always kind to organ-grinders. There was an Italian who used to come round with a barrel-organ when I was a little boy. I can see him now. I used to watch for him from my nursery window, and as soon as he came in sight I flew down to my mother for a penny, and then went into the garden and stood beside him whilst he played.
Brandon, to drink to the health of the Emperor or of his ministers, of France, to peace or to victory, etc., etc., and this they kept up till midnight. Inside the glasses jingled, and outside the children fired crackers. They had erected a climbing pole before the church, and wooden horses and organ-grinders had come from Saverne, and there was a holiday at the college.
It was on one of these occasions that I discovered the petty graft exercised on the organ-grinders. The push-cart men all paid toll to the policeman on the beat, and the captain of the precinct winked at it. The officers of the precinct looked upon the religious leaders as "easy marks" every one of them.
The brown man was standing in front of her with his eyes fixed on her face; he was gazing at her so earnestly, sincerely, and wistfully that for an instant she almost lost herself. Jamie's gaze was less sympathetic; he looked puzzled, and kept very close to his protectress. "I found Jamie with some organ-grinders," said the lady, recovering her composure, and speaking in rather a cold voice.
The curious ways that that Jacob had, surpassed everything. He wouldn't play marbles on Sunday, he wouldn't rob birds' nests, he wouldn't give hot pennies to organ-grinders' monkeys; he didn't seem to take any interest in any kind of rational amusement. So the other boys used to try to reason it out and come to an understanding of him, but they couldn't arrive at any satisfactory conclusion.
Down behind the French market, in a short, obscure street that runs from Ursulines to Barracks street, and is named in honor of Albert Gallatin, are some old buildings of three or four stories' height, rented, in John Richling's day, to a class of persons who got their livelihood by sub-letting the rooms, and parts of rooms, to the wretchedest poor of New Orleans, organ-grinders, chimney-sweeps, professional beggars, street musicians, lemon-peddlers, rag-pickers, with all the yet dirtier herd that live by hook and crook in the streets or under the wharves; a room with a bed and stove, a room without, a half-room with or without ditto, a quarter-room with or without a blanket or quilt, and with only a chalk-mark on the floor instead of a partition.
I first tumbled to it the day those Neapolitans came back with their organs, though I didn't seriously suspect things then; they never came again, those two, they had done their part. That's the Camorra all over, from all accounts. The Count I told you about is pretty high up in it, by the way he spoke, but there will be grades and grades between him and the organ-grinders.
The multiplicity of beggars, louts, and organ-grinders was alone a proof of Brighton's success in the world; the organ-grinders, often a man and a woman yoked together, were extraordinarily English, genteel, and prosperous as they trudged in their neat, middle-class raiment through the gritty mud of the macadam, stolidly ignoring the menace of high-stepping horses and disdainful glittering wheels.
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