Part 113

There are twelve street-sellers of razor-paste, but they seem to prefer “working” the distant suburbs, or going on country rounds, as there are often only three in London. It is still vended, I am told, to clerks, who use it to sharpen their pen-knives, but the paste, owing to the prevalence of the use of steel pens, is now almost a superfluity, compared to what it was. It is bought also, and frequently enough in public-houses, by working men, as a means of “setting” their razors. The vendors make the paste themselves, except two, who purchase of a street-seller. The ingredients are generally fuller’s earth (1_d._), hog’s lard (1_d._), and emery powder (2_d._). The paste is sold in boxes carried on a tray, which will close and form a sort of case, like a backgammon board. The quantity I have given will make a dozen boxes (each sold at 1_d._), so that the profit is 7_d._ in the 1_s._, for to the 4_d._ paid for ingredients must be added 1_d._, for the cost of a dozen boxes. The paste is announced as “warranted to put an edge to a razor or pen-knife superior to anything ever before offered to the public.” The street-sellers offer to prove this by sharpening any gentleman’s pen-knife on the paste spread on a piece of soldier’s old belt, which sharpening, when required, they accomplish readily enough. One of these paste-sellers, I was told, had been apprenticed to a barber; another had been a cutler, the remainder are of the ordinary class of street-sellers.

Calculating that 6 men “work” the metropolis daily, taking 2_s._ each per day (with 1_s._ 2_d._ profit), we find 187_l._ the amount of the street outlay.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF CRACKERS AND DETONATING BALLS.

This trade, I am informed by persons familiar with it, would be much more frequently carried on by street-folk, and in much greater numbers, were it not the one which of all street callings finds the least toleration from the police. “You must keep your eyes on both corners of the street,” said one man, “when you sell crackers; and what good is it the police stopping us? The boys have only to go to a shop, and then it’s all right.”

The trade is only known in the streets at holiday seasons, and is principally carried on for a few days before and after the 5th of November, and again at Christmas-tide. “Last November was good for crackers,” said one man; “it was either Guy Faux day, or the day before, I’m not sure which now, that I took 15_s._, and nearly all of boys, for waterloo crackers and ball crackers (the common trade names), ‘waterloo’ being the ‘pulling crackers.’ At least three parts was ball crackers. I sold them from a barrow, wheeling it about as if it was hearthstone, and just saying quietly when I could, ‘Six a penny crackers.’ The boys soon tell one another. All sorts bought of me; doctors’ boys, school boys, pages, boys as was dressed beautiful, and boys as hadn’t neither shoes nor stockings. It’s sport for them all.” The same man told me he did well at what he called “last Poram fair,” clearing 13_s._ 6_d._ in three days, or rather evenings or nights. “Poram fair, sir,” he said, “is a sort of feast among the Jews, always three weeks I’ve heard, afore their Passover, and I then work Whitechapel and all that way.”

I inquired of a man who had carried on this street trade for a good many years, it might be ten or twelve, if he had noticed the uses to which his boy-customers put his not very innocent wares, and he entered readily into the subject.

“Why, sir,” he said, “they’re not all boy-customers, as you call them, but they’re far the most. I’ve sold to men, and often to drunken men. What larks there is with the ball-crackers! One man lost his eye at Stepney Fair, but that’s 6 or 7 years ago, from a lark with crackers. The rights of it I never exactly understood, but I know he lost his eye, from the dry gravel in the ball-cracker bouncing into it. But it’s the boys as is fondest of crackers. I sold ’em all last Christmas, and made my 5_s._ and better on Boxing-day. I was sold out before 6 o’clock, as I had a regular run at last--just altogether. After that, I saw one lad go quietly behind a poor lame old woman and pull a Waterloo close behind her ear; he was a biggish boy and tidily dressed; and the old body screamed, ‘I’m shot.’ She turned about, and the boy says, says he, ‘Does your grandmother know you’re out? It’s a improper thing, so it is, for you to be walking out by yourself.’ You should have seen her passion! But as she was screaming out, ‘You saucy wagabone! You boys is all wagabones. People can’t pass for you. I’ll give you in charge, I will,” the lad was off like a shot.

“But one of the primest larks I ever saw that way was last winter, in a street by Shoreditch. An old snob that had a bulk was making it all right for the night, and a lad goes up. I don’t know what he said to the old boy, but I saw him poke something, a last I think it was, against the candle, put it out, and then run off. In a minute, three or four lads that was ready, let fly at the bulk with their ball-crackers, and there was a clatter as if the old snob had tumbled down, and knocked his lasts down; but he soon had his head out--he was Irish, I think--and he first set up a roar like a Smithfield bull, and he shouts, ‘I’m kilt intirely wid the murthering pistols! Po-lice! Po-o-lice!’ He seemed taken quite by surprise--for they was capital crackers--I think he couldn’t have been used to bulks, or he would have been used to pelting; but how he did bellow, surely.

“I think it was that same night too, I saw a large old man, buttoned up, but seeming as if he was fine-dressed for a party, in a terrible way in the Commercial-road. I lived near there then. There was three boys afore me--and very well they did it--one of ’em throws a ball-cracker bang at the old gent’s feet, just behind him, and makes him jump stunning, and the boy walks on with his hands in his pocket, as if he know’d nothing about it. Just after that another boy does the same, and then the t’other boy; and the old gent--Lord, how he swore! It was shocking in such a respectable man, as I told him, when he said, _I’d_ crackered him! ‘Me cracker you,’ says I; ‘it ’ud look better if you’d have offered to treat a poor fellow to a pint of beer with ginger in it, and the chill off, than talk such nonsense.’ As we was having this jaw, one of the boys comes back and lets fly again; and the old gent saw how it was, and he says, ‘Now, if you’ll run after that lad, and give him a d----d good hiding, you shall have the beer.’ ‘Money down, sir,’ says I, ‘if you mean honour bright;’ but he grumbled something, and walked away. I saw him soon after, talking to a Bobby, so I made a short cut home.”

At the fairs near London there is a considerable sale of these combustibles; and they are often displayed on large stalls in the fair. They furnish the means of practical jokes to the people on their return. “After last Whitsun Greenwich Fair,” said a street-seller to me, “I saw a gent in a white choker, like a parson, look in at a pastry-cook’s shop, as is jist by the Elephant (and Castle), a-waiting for a ’bus, I s’pose. There was an old ’oman with a red face standing near him; and I saw a lad, very quick, pin something to one’s coat and the t’other’s gown. They turned jist arter, and bang goes a Waterloo, and they looks savage one at another; and hup comes that indentical boy, and he says to the red faced ’oman, a pointing to the white choker, ‘Marm, I seed him a twiddling with your gown. He done it for a lark arter the fair, and ought to stand something.’ So the parson, if he were a parson, walked away.”

There are eight makers, I am told, who supply the street-sellers and the small shops with these crackers. The wholesale price is 4_d._ to 6_d._ a gross, the “cracker-balls” being the dearest. The retail price in the streets is from six to twelve a penny, according to the appearance and eagerness of the purchaser. Some street traders carry these commodities on trays, and very few are stationary, except at fairs. I am assured, that for a few days last November, from 50 to 60 men and women were selling crackers in the streets, of course “on the sly.” In so irregular and surreptitious a trade, it is not possible even to approximate to statistics. The most intelligent man that I met with, acquainted, as he called it, “with all the ins and outs of the trade,” calculated that in November and Christmas, 100_l._ at least was expended in the streets in these combustibles, and another 100_l._ in the other parts of the year. About Tower-hill, Ratcliff-highway (or “the Highway,” as street-sellers often call it), and in Wapping and Shadwell, the sale of crackers is the best. The sellers are the ordinary street-sellers, and no patter is required.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF LUCIFER-MATCHES.

Under this head I shall speak only of those who _sell_ the matches, apart from those who, in proffering lucifer boxes, mix up trade with mendicancy. The latter class I have spoken of, and shall treat of them more fully under the head of “the London Poor.”

Until “lucifers” became cheap and in general use, the matches sold by the street-folks, and there were numbers in the trade, were usually prepared by themselves. The manufactures were simple enough. Wooden splints, twice or thrice the length of the lucifer matches now in use, were prepared, and dipped into brimstone, melted in an iron ladle. The matches were never, as now, self-igniting, or rather ignitable by rapid friction; but it was necessary to “strike a light” by the concussion of a flint and steel, the sparks from which were communicated to tinder kept in a “box.”

The brimstone match-sellers were of all ages, but principally, I am told, old people. Many of them during, and for some years after the war, wore tattered regimentals, or some remains of military paraphernalia, and had been, or assumed to have been, soldiers, but not entitled to a pension; the same with seamen. I inquired of some of the present race of match-sellers what became of the “old brimstones,” as I heard them called, but from them I could gain little information. An old groundsel-gatherer told me that some went into his trade. Others, I learned, “took to pins,” and others to song or tract selling. Indeed the brimstone match-sellers not unfrequently carried a few songs to vend with their matches. It must be borne in mind that, 15 years ago, those street trades, into which any one who is master of a few pence can now embark, were less numerous. Others of the match-sellers, with rounds, or being known men, displaced their “brimstones” for “lucifers,” and traded on as usual. I heard of one old man, now dead, who made a living on brimstone-matches by selling a good quantity in Hackney, Stoke Newington, and Islington, and who long refused to sell lucifer-matches; “they was new-fangled rubbish,” he said, “and would soon have their day.” He found his customers, however, fall off, and in apprehension of losing them all, he was compelled to move with the times.

“I believe, sir,” said one man, still a street-seller, but not having sold matches of any kind for years,--“I believe I was the first who hawked ‘Congreves,’ or ‘instantaneous lights;’ they weren’t called ‘lucifers’ for a good while after. I bought them at Mr. Jones’s light-house in the Strand, and if I remember right, for it must be more than 20 years ago, between 1820 and 1830, Mr. Jones had a patent somehow about them. I bought them at 7_s._ a dozen boxes, and sold them at 1_s._ a box. I’m not sure how many matches was in a box, but I think it was 100. You’ll get as much for a farthing now, as you would for a shilling then. The matches were lighted by being drawn quickly through sand-paper. I sold them for a twelvemonth, and had the trade all to myself. As far as I know, I had; for I never met with or heard of anybody else in it all that time. I did decent at it. I suppose I cleared my 15_s._ a week. The price kept the same while I was in the business. I sold them at city offices. I supplied the Phœnix in Lombard-street, I remember, and the better sort of shops. People liked them when they wanted to light a candle in a hurry, in places where there was no fire to seal a letter, or such like. There was no envelopes in them days. The penny-postage brought _them_ in. I was sometimes told not to carry such things there again, as they didn’t want the house set on fire by keeping such dangerous things in it. Now, I suppose, lucifers are in every house, and that there’s not a tinder-box used in all London.” Such appears to have been the beginning of the extensive street-trade in these chemical preparations now carried on. At the twelvemonth’s end, my informant went into another line of business.

The “German Congreves” were soon after introduced, and were at first sold wholesale at the “English and German” swag-shops in Houndsditch, at 2_s._ the dozen boxes, and were retailed at 3_d._, 4_d._, and sometimes as high as 6_d._ the box. These matches, I am told, “kept their hold” about five years, when they ceased to be a portion of the street trade. The German Congreves were ignited by being drawn along a slip of sand-paper, at the bottom of the box, as is done at present; with some, however, a double piece of sand-paper was sold for purposes of igniting.

After this time cheaper and cheaper matches were introduced, and were sold in the streets immediately on their introduction. At first, the cheaper matches had an unpleasant smell, and could hardly be kept in a bed-room, but that was obviated, and the trade progressed to its present extent.

The lucifer-match boxes, the most frequent in the street-trade, are bought by the poor persons selling them in the streets, at the manufacturers, or at oil-shops, for a number of oilmen buy largely of the manufacturers, and can “supply the trade” at the same rate as the manufacturer. The price is 2-1/4_d._ the dozen boxes, each box containing 150 matches. Some of the boxes (German made) are round, and many used to be of tin, but these are rarely seen now. The prices are proportionate. The common price of a lucifer box in the streets is 1/2_d._, but many buyers, I am told, insist upon and obtain three a penny, which they do generally of some one who supplies them regularly. The trade is chiefly itinerant.

One feeble old man gave me the following account of his customers. He had been in the employ of market-gardeners, carmen, and others, whose business necessitated the use of carts and horses. In his old age he was unable to do any hard work; he was assisted, however, by his family, especially by one son living in the country; he had a room in the house of a daughter, who was a widow, but his children were only working people, with families, he said, and so he sold a few lucifers “as a help,” and to have the comfort of a bit of tobacco, and buy an old thing in the way of clothing without troubling any one. Out of his earnings, too, he paid 6_d._ a week for the schooling of one of his daughter’s children.

“I _sell_ these lucifers, sir,” he said, in answer to my inquiries, “I never beg with them: I’d scorn it. My children help me, as I’ve told you; I did my best for them when I was able, and so I have a just sort of claim on them. Well, indeed, then, sir, as you ask me, if I had only myself to depend upon, why I couldn’t live. I must beg or go into the house, and I don’t know which I should take to worst at 72. I’ve been selling lucifers about five years, for I was worn out with hard work and rheumatics when I was 65 or 66. I go regular rounds, about 2 miles in a day, or 2-1/2, or if it’s fine 3 miles or more from where I live, and the same distance back, for I can sometimes walk middling if I can do nothing else. I carry my boxes tied up in a handkerchief, and hold 2 or 3 in my hand. I’m ashamed to hold them out on any rail where I aint known; and never do if there isn’t a good-humoured looking person to be seen below, or through the kitchen window. But my eyesight aint good, and I make mistakes, and get snapped up very short at times. Yesterday, now, I was lucky in my small way. There’s a gentleman, that if I can see him, I can always sell boxes to at 1_d._ a piece. That’s his price, he says, and he takes no change if I offer it. I saw him yesterday at his own door, and says he, ‘Well, old greybeard, I haven’t seen you for a long time. Here’s 1_s._, leave a dozen boxes.’ I told him I had only 11 left; but he said, ‘O, it’s all the same,’ and he told a boy that was crossing the hall to take them into the kitchen, and we soon could hear the housekeeper grumbling quite loud--perhaps she didn’t know her master could hear--about being bothered with rubbish that people took in master with; and the gentleman shouts out, ‘Some of you stop that old ---- mouth, will you? She wants a profit out of them in her bills.’ All was quiet then, and he says to me quite friendly, ‘If she wasn’t the best cook in London I’d have quitted her long since, by G--.’” The old man chuckled no little as he related this; he then went on, “He’s a swearing man, but a good man, I’m sure, and I don’t know why he’s so kind to me. Perhaps he is to others. I’m ashamed to hold my boxes to the ary rails, ’cause so many does that to beg. I sell lucifers both to mistresses and maids. Some will have 3 for a 1_d._, and though it’s a poor profit, I do it, for they say, ‘O, if you come this way constant, we’ll buy of you whenever we want. If you won’t give 3 a penny, there’s plenty will.’ I sell, too, in some small streets, Lisson-grove way, to women that see me from their windows, and come down to the door. They’re needle-workers I think. They say sometimes, ‘I’m glad I’ve seen you, for it saves me the trouble of running out.’

[Illustration: THE LUCIFER MATCH GIRL.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

“Well, sir, I’m sure I hardly know how many boxes I sell. On a middling good day I sell 2 dozen, on a good day 3 dozen, on a bad day not a dozen, sometimes not half-a-dozen, and sometimes, but not often, not more than a couple. Then in bad weather I don’t go out, and time hangs very heavy if it isn’t a Monday; for every Monday I buy a threepenny paper of a newsman for 2_d._, and read it as well as I can with my old eyes and glasses, and get my daughter to read a bit to me in the evening, and next day I send the paper to my son in the country, and so save him buying one. As well as I can tell I sell about 9 dozen boxes a week, one week with another, and clear from 2_s._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ It’s employment for me as well as a help.”

It is not easy to estimate the precise number of persons who really sell lucifer matches as a means of subsistence, or as a principal means. There are many, especially girls and women, the majority being Irishwomen, who do not directly solicit charity, and do not even say, “Buy a box of lucifers from a poor creature, to get her a ha’porth of bread;” or, “please a bit of broken victuals, if it’s only cold potatoes, for a box of the best lucifers.” Yet these match-sellers look so imploringly down an area, or through a window, some “shouldering” a young child the while, and remain there so pertinaciously that a box is bought, or a halfpenny given, often merely to get rid of the applicant.

An intelligent man, a street-seller, and familiar with street-trading generally, whom I questioned on the subject, said: “It’s really hard to tell, sir, but I should calculate this way. It’s the real sellers you ask about; them as tries to live on their selling lucifers, or as their main support. I have worked London and the outside places--yes, I mean the suburbs--in ten rounds, or districts, but six is better, for you can then go the same round the same day next week, and so get known. The real sellers, in my opinion, is old men and women out of employ, or past work, and to beg they are ashamed. I’ve read the Bible you see, sir, though I’ve had too much to do with gay persons even to go to church. I should say that in each of those ten rounds, or at any rate, splicing one with another, was twenty persons really selling lucifers. Yes, and depending a good deal upon them, for they’re an easy carriage for an infirm body, and as ready a sale as most things. I don’t reckon them as begs, or whines, or sticks to a house for an hour, but them as sells; in my opinion, they’re 200, and no more. All the others dodges, in one way or other, on pity and charity. There’s one lurk that’s getting common now. A man well dressed, and very clean, and wearing gloves, knocks at a door, and asks to speak to the master or mistress. If he succeeds, he looks about him as if he was ashamed, and then he pulls out of his coat-pocket a lucifer box or two, and asks, as a favour, to be allowed to sell one, as reduced circumstances drive him to do so. He doesn’t beg, but I don’t reckon him a seller, for he has always some story or other to tell, that’s all a fakement.” Most dwellers in a suburb will have met with one of these well-dressed match-sellers.