Antonio the organ grinder and the plight of migrants in Victorian Leeds
Bury the Leeds #5
‘Bestia!’
You don’t need Google Translate to deduce that Antonio the organ grinder was not pleased.
The man from Genoa had been “leaning picturesquely” on his musical instrument outside Leeds station in early 1891. A reporter approached him and broke the unfortunate news that an MP wanted to tax his profession.
According to the Yorkshire Evening Post, he then made a swift gesture with his right hand to suggest he wanted to perform a little “operative surgery” on James Jacoby, the right honourable member for Mid-Derbyshire.
Antonio was described as looking like a “compound of pirate and brigand” although on closer inspection he revealed a “perpetual smile and personal atmosphere of onions.”
I’ve never heard of someone having an atmosphere of onions, though I’m pretty sure it was intended as a compliment.
Antonio was one of many Italian migrants who plied their trade as an organ grinder in Leeds during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Essentially an old school busker, the organ grinder would have been a familiar sight and sound in the city centre.
They cranked their instrument, which played a pre-installed but always lively tune to entertain workers and earn a few coins. Sometimes they’d even dance too.
The organ grinder and his monkey live on in the slightly rude idiom we still use today about wanting to speak to the manager and not an underling. However, in reality, most did not have primates with them.
It sounds like Antonio earned just enough to scrape by a meagre sort of existence in Leeds, far from the old country.
The reporter spent an hour with Antonio in February 1891 as he wanted to get his reaction to the potential new tax on his business.
The article offers a fascinating insight into the dismal poverty and discrimination experienced by migrants in Leeds during the Victorian era.
Yet despite this grim reality, Antonio had a sunny sort of optimism you can’t help but admire.
Little Italy
The reporter met Antonio and his wife Francesca again on Kirkgate at the end of the day and followed them home to an alleyway off Marsh Lane.
Francesca was fiercely loyal and helped him lug the heavy instrument around Leeds.
They lived in a little, Little Italy, home to Leeds’s relatively small Italian population.
Antonio had “recovered his inborn serenity” following the unwelcome news about tax proposals.
He warmly invited the reporter into their cramped abode, which the couple shared with other Italians living in Leeds.
The kitchen was tiny and the ceiling “villainously black” yet the inhabitants were nevertheless houseproud.
The walls were adorned with artwork, including a painting of Italian general Garibaldi on a green horse. Antonio was said to take great delight in that one.
Milan’s magnificent Duomo had also been recreated in plaster of Paris and it featured luminous red paper windows.
Antonio lowered the flame of a paraffin lamp and lit up the mini cathedral in the darkness. The reporter said the sight was overpowering.
Bah!
Naturally, the conversation turned to the “tyrannical” tax proposals for organ grinders.
Some well-meaning but futile attempts to carry on the conversation in Italian were dropped in favour of English.
If the measures were to be implemented by the government it would see organ grinders taxed five shillings a week.
They would then receive a licence and legally be allowed to go about their business.
All the talk of tax got Antonio into a lather again.
The report said: “He bandied every indignation from a vocabulary that was singularly strong in that respect.”
Antonio disputed claims in the press that organ grinders had been earning 15 shillings a day.
He insisted this sum could be earned in a week, at best.
By the late 19th century organ grinders had been a fixture in towns and cities for decades.
Their instruments made a racket and they generally played the same tune over and over. It’s fair to say they weren’t loved by everyone.
Antonio said when the trade was young, profits could be large, but now? “Bah!”
Antonio bought his organ grinder at Pietro Biletti’s shop in Holbeck and it took him over a year to pay off the purchase.
He wanted to install a new tune on his machine called ‘The Bogie Man’. But he could kiss goodbye to that if the taxman came for his profits.
Mean streets
Sadly, the sight of a foreigner on the streets of Leeds brought out discrimination and even downright racism.
Antonio spoke bitterly about the derogatory language used by some “Inglese" against his fellow countrymen. He said they even used dogs to “worry the heels of foreigners”.
But he added that some folk made his work worthwhile, like a white haired gentleman in Headingley who spoke Italian and gave Francesca a silver shilling every Wednesday.
And there were the work girls who danced in their dinner hour to his music behind the Grand Restaurant on Boar Lane.
As the reporter left, he noticed a group of Italian men lounging out of doors in the Italian quarter “in defiance of the chilly air.”
They were discussing the tax proposals “with vehemence.”
The report said emotions hadn’t run this high in Little Italy since the day Giovanni Manzi’s piano was smashed by a furniture van on the way to Pontefract.
Ten years later…
We catch up with Antonio ten years later in November 1901.
He was again confronted with the unpleasant news that the chancellor was now seriously considering introducing a tax on the humble organ grinder.
He’d heard it all before of course. James Jacoby’s proposal a decade prior had gone nowhere, after all.
Antonio said he was strong in the belief that “threatened men live long”.
I like him more and more.
A trouble-making reporter tried to goad Antonio and push his buttons.
They said to him: “A large number of presumably sane and reasonable people believe Britain will cease to be a Christian nation if organ grinding continues in this untrammelled way.”
There was also a sinister suggestion that the organ grinders would either face “taxation or massacre”.
But the Italian lit another cigarette, smiled, and said the probabilities were “on the side of Antonio.”
Sources:
www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
Yorkshire Evening Post, February 7, 1891.
Yorkshire Evening Post, November 29, 1901.