crossing-sweeper

A couple of Mayfair swells; and the Indian crossing-sweeper who cleared the mud from those quality streets.

Camille Silvy: Photographer of Modern Life; Fiona Banner: Duveens Commission 2010

But every newspaper man, every crossing-sweeper, thinks himself a moralist.

Later Articles and Reviews

Then I saw him, outside the entrance to the Bank, amongst a huddle of pedestrians waiting for the crossing-sweeper to do his work.

Excerpt: The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox

(The crossing-sweeper does not obstruct the path, and I suppose is away at his villa on Sundays.)

Roundabout Papers

He knew exactly how he stood, even with the crossing-sweeper to whom he had given a penny last Tuesday, as with the Longestaffes, father and son, to whom he had not as yet made any payment on behalf of the purchase of Pickering.

The Way We Live Now

He halted at the pavement edge, where a crossing had been swept, for it had rained; and extracting a penny from his trouser pocket, gave it to the crossing-sweeper, who looked up at his long figure with a round and knowing eye.

On Forsyte 'Change

And the boy, Wikkey Whiston, was a crossing-sweeper.

Wikkey A Scrap

I am sorry for this, for I fancy people are becoming a little tired of the race, in story-books at least, but as he _was_ a crossing-sweeper it cannot be helped.

Wikkey A Scrap

"Why don't yer try my place where I sleep?" said another crossing-sweeper to him one day, when he told him his trouble.

Willie the Waif

When we went to see the woman, Jenny, we found her in her poor little cottage, nursing a vagrant boy called Jo, a crossing-sweeper, who had tramped down from London, and was tramping he didn't know where.

Ten Girls from Dickens