The watercress girl is one of the
accounts in Henry Mayhew’s London Labour
and the London Poor which is a series of real life interviews with the
labouring poor of London. The watercress girl is a young eight year old who
sells watercress for a living in the street but she appears to be much older
than her age due to how she talks to Mayhew about the ‘bitterest struggles of
life’ and it’s like she’s already lived most of her life through her mannerisms
and words. All her knowledge revolves around watercress but she doesn’t know
what a park is. She is described as
having a ‘little face, pale and thin with privation’ highlighting severe
malnourishment and there are wrinkles ‘where dimples ought to have been’ again
suggesting ageing, most likely due to the stresses of being a street seller for
twelve months. She is unable to eat too much food as ‘when some dinner hot
dinner was offered to her, she would not touch it’ ‘it made her sick’. Too much food to the
young girl must have in reality been hardly anything and shows she has accepted
hunger. Her unhappiness is clear as she
says ‘I go about the streets with water cresses, crying “four bunches a penny,
water- cresses’’ but she is unable to escape the cycle of poverty.
She says ‘I don’t have no dinner.
Mother gives me two slices of bread and butter and a cup of tea for breakfast
and then I go till tea and has the same' ‘we has meat on a Sunday and of course I should like to have it every
day’. As a young child of course nutritious meals are especially necessary for
growth and energy etc but the young girl’s breakfast and dinner solely consists
of bread and butter. She also tells
Mayhew that her mother has exactly the same diet but more tea ‘three cups
sometimes’, thus highlighting the inadequacy of nutrititious foods in both the parent and the child's diet. At the courtesy of the Jewish
family the watercress girl is employed by she gets fish on Saturday morning and meat
for dinner, tea and supper, and she says ‘I like it very well. I have a reg’lar
good lot to eat’. This is the only time she actually eats well and it is only
due to the kindness of someone else. She
acts very mature when she says ‘no; I never has no sweet- stuff I never buy none -I don’t like it it’s like a child to care for sugar- sticks,
and not like one who’s got a living to earn and vittals to earn’. The sugar
sticks symbolise happiness and the joys of childhood but the young thinks it is childish to like the sugar sticks despite being a child herself. Her childishness is contrasted with
her being forced to grow up too fast for example when she says ‘ I knows a good many games, but I don’t play at ‘em’, ‘cos going
out with cresses tires me’. Therefore through the watercress girl we see the link between poverty and a poor diet and this is accentuated through the lack of the welfare system.
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