SOURCE: Zucchi, John E. “‘The Organ Boys’ in London.” In The Little Slaves of the Harp: Italian Child Street Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Paris, London, and New York, pp. 76-110. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992.

In the following excerpt, Zucchi discusses the treatment of Italian children working as musicians and figurine sellers in the streets of London in the nineteenth-century.

The young boys from Parma made their first appearance in London soon after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. In March 1820 the Times reported that “the public have of late been exceedingly annoyed by the appearance of a number of Italian boys with monkeys and white mice wandering about the streets, exciting the compassion of the benevolent.” Apparently, two Italian men brought at least twenty children from towns near Parma to London on a fifteen-month contract for the express purpose of begging in the streets. Each boy was given a...