London Labour and the London Poor
What was the story Mayhew wrote about a Cheap Jack?
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One night when he was eight years old, he was beaten again for not selling all his matches that day. He decided to run away from home. The next day, he left with only nine pence worth of matches to sell. He stayed in low lodging houses, eating scraps of food from the trash and selling matches to pay for his room. After two years of selling matches, he began hawking sheet music in bars, entertaining sailors with songs. At times, when he ran out of stock to sell, he was desperately poor, with no money for food. Eventually as a teen, he was hired by a Cheap John to hawk goods for wages, married and started a family. Twenty-five years later, he still worked as a Cheap Jack at the fairs.