Part 114
Adopting my informant’s calculation, and supposing that each of these traders take, on lucifers alone, but 4_s._ weekly, selling nine dozen (with a profit to the seller of from 1_s._ 9_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._), we find 2080_l._ expended in this way. The matches are sold also at stalls, with other articles, in the street markets, and elsewhere; but this traffic, I am told, becomes smaller, and only amounts to one-tenth of the amount I have specified as taken by itinerants. These street-sellers reside in all parts of town which I have before specified as the quarters of the poor.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF CIGAR LIGHTS, OR FUZEES.
This is one of the employments to which boys, whom neglect, ill-treatment, destitution, or a vagrant disposition, have driven or lured to a street life, seem to resort to almost as readily as to the offers, “Old your ’os, sir?” “Shall I carry your passel, marm?”
The trifling capital required to enter into the business is one cause of its numbering many followers. The “fuzees,” as I most frequently heard them called, are sold at the “Congreve shops,” and are chiefly German made. At one time, indeed, they were announced as “German tinder.” The wholesale charge is 4-1/2_d._ per 1000 “lights.” The 1000 lights are apportioned into fifty rows, each of twenty self-igniting matches; and these “rows” are sold in the streets, one or two for 1/2_d._, and two, three, or four 1_d._ It is common enough for a juvenile fuzee-seller to buy only 500; so that 2-1/4_d._ supplies his stock in trade.
The boys (for the majority of the street-traders who sell _only_ fuzees, are boys) frequent the approaches to the steam-boat piers, the omnibus stands, and whatever places are resorted to by persons who love to smoke in the open air. Some of these young traders have neither shoes nor stockings, more especially the Irish lads, who are at least half the number, and their apology for a cap fully displays the large red ears, and flat features, which seem to distinguish a class of the Irish children in the streets of London. Some Irish boys hold out their red-tipped fuzees with an appealing look, meant to be plaintive, and say, in a whining tone, “Spend a halfpenny on a poor boy, your honour.” Others offer them, without any appealing look or tone, either in silence, or saying--“Buy a fuzee to light your pipe or cigar, sir; a row of lights for a 1/2_d._”
I met with one Irish boy, of thirteen or fourteen years of age, who was offering fuzees to the persons going to Chalk Farm fair on Easter Tuesday, but the rain kept away many visitors, and the lad could hardly find a customer. He was literally drenched, for his skin, shining with the rain, could be seen about his arms and knees through the slits of his thin corduroy jacket and trowsers, and he wore no shirt.
“It’s oranges I sell in ginral, your honour,” he said, “and it’s on oranges I hopes to be next week, plaze God. But mother--it’s orange-selling she is too--wanted to make a grand show for Aister wake, and tuk the money to do it, and put me on the fuzees. It’s the thruth I’m telling your honour. She thought I might be after making a male’s mate” (meal’s meat) “out of them, intirely; but the sorra a male I’ll make to day if it cost me a fardin, for I haven’t tuk one. I niver remimber any fader; mother and me lives together somehow, glory be to God; but it’s often knowin’ what it is to be hungry we are. I’ve sould fuzees before, when ingans, and nuts, and oranges was dear and not for the poor to buy, but I niver did so bad as to-day. A gintleman once said to me: ‘Here, Pat, yer sowl, you look hungry. Here’s a thirteener for yez; go and get drunk wid it.’ Och, no, your honour, he wasn’t an Irish gintleman; it was afther mocking me he was, God save him.” On my asking the boy if he felt hurt at this mockery, he answered, slily, with all his air of simplicity, “Sure, thin, wasn’t there the shillin’? For it was a shillin’ he gave me, glory be to God. No, I niver heard it called a thirteener before, but mother has. Och, thin, sir, indeed, and it’s could and wet I am. I have a new shirt, as was giv to mother for me by a lady, but I wouldn’t put it on sich a day as this, your honour, sir. I’ll go to mass in it ivery Sunday. I’ve made 6_d._ a day and sometimes more a sellin’ fuzees, wid luck, God be praised, but the bad wither’s put me out intirely this time.”
The fuzee-sellers frequently offer their wares at the bars of public-houses in the daytime, and sometimes dispose of them to those landlords who sell cigars. From the best information I can command there are now upwards of 200 persons selling fuzees in the streets of the metropolis. But the trade is often collateral. The cigar-seller offers fuzees, play-bill sellers (boys) do so sometimes at the doors of the theatres to persons coming out, the pipe-sellers also carry them; they are sometimes sold along with lucifer matches, and at miscellaneous stalls. It will, I believe, be accurate to state that in the streets there are generally 100 persons subsisting, or endeavouring to subsist, on the sale of fuzees alone. It may be estimated also that each of these traders averages a receipt of 10_d._ a day (with a profit exceeding 6_d._), so that 1300_l._ is yearly laid out in the streets in this way.
Of the fuzee-selling lads, those who are parentless, or runaway, sleep in the lodging-houses, in the better conducted of which the master or deputy takes charge of the stock of fuzees or lucifer-matches during the night to avert the risk of fire; in others these combustibles are stowed anywhere at the discretion, or indiscretion, of the lodgers.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF GUTTA-PERCHA HEADS.
There are many articles which, having become cheap in the shops, find their way to the street-traders, and after a brief, or comparatively brief, and prosperous trade has been carried on in them, gradually disappear. These are usually things which are grotesque or amusing, but of no utility, and they are supplanted by some more attractive novelty--a main attraction being that it is a novelty.
Among such matters of street-trade are the elastic toys called “gutta-percha heads;” these, however, have no gutta-percha in their composition, but consist solely of a composition made of glue and treacle--the same as is used for printer’s rollers. The heads are small coloured models of the human face, usually with projecting nose and chin, and wide or distorted mouth, which admit of being squeezed into a different form of features, their elasticity causing them to return to the original caste. The trade carried on in the streets in these toys was at one time extensive, but it seems now to be gradually disappearing. On a fine day a little after noon, last week, there was not one “head” exposed for sale in any of the four great street markets of Leather-lane, the Brill, Tottenham-court-road including the Hampstead-road, and High-street, Camden-town.
The trade became established in the streets upwards of two years ago. At first, I am told by a street-seller, himself one of the first, there were six “head-sellers,” who “worked” the parks and their vicinity. My informant one day sold a gross of heads in and about Hyde-park, and a more fortunate fellow-trader on the same day sold 1-1/2 gross. The heads were recommended, whenever opportunity offered, by a little patter. “Here,” one man used to say, “here’s the Duke of Wellington’s head for 1_d._ It’s modelled from the statty on horseback, but is a improvement. His nose speaks for itself. Sir Robert Peel’s only 1_d._ Anybody you please is 1_d._; a free choice and no favour. The Queen and all the Royal Family 1_d._ apiece.” As the street-seller offered to dispose of the model of any eminent man’s head and face, he held up some one of the most grotesque of the number. Another man one Saturday evening sold five or six dozen to costermongers and others in the street markets “pattering” them off as the likenesses of any policeman who might be obnoxious to the street-traders! This was when the trade was new. The number of sellers was a dozen in the second week; it was soon twenty-five, all confining themselves to the sale of the heads; besides these the heads were offered to the street-buying public by many of the stationary street-folk, whose stock partook of a miscellaneous character. The men carrying on this traffic were of the class of general street-sellers.
“The trade was spoiled, sir,” said an informant, “by so many going into it, but I’ve heard that it’s not bad in parts of the country now. The sale was always best in the parks, I believe, and Sundays was the best days. I don’t pretend to be learned about religion, but I know that many a time after I’d earned next to nothing in a wet week, it came a fine Sunday morning, and I took as much as got me and my wife and children a good dinner of meat and potatoes, and sometimes, when we could depend on it, smoking hot from the baker’s oven; and I then felt I had something to thank God for. You see, sir, when a man’s been out all the week, and often with nothing to call half a dinner, and his wife’s earnings only a few pence by sewing at home, with three young children to take care of, you’re nourished and comforted, and your strength keeps up, by a meat dinner on a Sunday, quietly in your own room. But them as eats their dinner without having to earn it, can’t understand about that, and as the Sunday park trade was stopped, the police drive us about like dogs, not gentlemen’s dogs, but stray or mad dogs. And it seems there’s some sort of a new police. I can’t understand a bit of it, and I don’t want to, for the old police is trouble enough.”
The gutta-percha heads are mostly bought at the “English and German” swag-shops. A few are made by the men who sell them in the streets. The “swag” price is 1_s._ the gross; at one time the swag man demurred to sell less than half a gross, but now when the demand is diminished, a dozen is readily supplied for 8_d._ The street price retail, is and always was 1_d._ a head. The principal purchasers in the street are boys and young men, with a few tradesmen or working people, “such as can afford a penny or two,” who buy the “gutta-percha” heads for their children. There used to be a tolerable trade in public houses, where persons enjoying themselves bought them “for a lark,” but this trade has now dwindled to a mere nothing. One of the “larks,” an informant knew to be practised, was to attach the head to a piece of paper or card, write upon it some one’s name, make it up into a parcel, and send it to the flattered individual. The same man had sold heads to young women, not servant-maids he thought, but in some not very ill paid employment, and he believed, from their manner when buying, for some similar purpose of “larking.” When the heads were a novelty, he sold a good many to women of the town.
There are now no street-folks who depend upon the sale of these gutta-percha heads, but they sell them occasionally. The usual mode is to display them on a tray, and now, generally with other things. One man showed me his box, which, when the lid was raised, he carried as a tray slung round his neck, and it contained gutta-percha heads, exhibition medals, and rings and other penny articles of jewellery.
There are at present, I am informed, 30 persons selling gutta-percha heads in the streets, some of them confining their business solely to those articles. In this number, however, I do not include those who are both makers and sellers. Their average receipts, I am assured, do not exceed 5_s._ a week each, for, though some may take 15_s._ a week, others, and generally the stationary head-sellers, do not take 1_s._ The profit to the street retailer is one third of his receipts. From this calculation it appears, that if the present rate of sale continue, 390_l._ is spent yearly in these street toys. At one time it was far more than twice the amount.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF FLY-PAPERS AND BEETLE-WAFERS.
Fly-Papers came, generally, into street-traffic, I am informed, in the summer of 1848.
The fly-papers are sold wholesale at many of the oil-shops, but the principal shop for the supply of the street-traders is in Whitechapel. The wholesale price is 2-1/4_d._ a dozen, and the (street) retail charge 1/2_d._ a paper, or three 1_d._ A young man, to whom I was referred, and whom I found selling, or rather bartering, crockery, gave me the following account of his experience of the fly-paper trade. He was a rosy-cheeked, strong-built young fellow, and said he thought he was “getting on” in his present trade. He spoke merrily of his troubles, as I have found common among his class, when they are over.
“My father had a milk-walk,” he said, “and when he died I was without money and had nothing to do, but I soon got a place with a single gentleman. He had a small house, and kept only me and a old housekeeper. I was to make myself generally useful, but when I first went, the most I had to do was to look after a horse that master had. Master never was on horseback in his life, but he took Skipjack--that was the horse’s name, he was rising six--for a debt, and kept him two months, till he could sell him to his mind. Master took a largeish garden--for he was fond of growing flowers and vegetables, and made presents of them--just before poor Skipjack went, and I was set to work in it, besides do my house-work. It was a easy place, and I was wery comfable. But master, who was a good master and a friend to a poor man, as I know, got into difficulties; he was something in the City; I never understood what; and one night, when I’d been above a year and a-half with him, he told me I must go, for he couldn’t afford to keep me any longer. Next day he was arrested, quite sudden I believe, and sent to prison for debt. I had a good character, but nobody cared for one from a man in prison, and in a month my money was out, and my last 3_s._ 6_d._ went for an advertisement, what was no good to me. I then took to holding horses or anything that way, and used to sleep in the parks or by the road-sides where it was quiet. I did that for a month and more. I’ve sometimes never tasted food all day, and used to quench myself (so he worded it) with cold water from the pumps. It took off the hunger for a time. I got to know other boys that was living as I was, and when I could afford it I slept at lodging-houses, the boys took me to or told me about. One evening a gentleman gave me 1_s._ for catching his horse that he’d left standing, but it had got frightened, and run off. Next morning I went into the fly-paper trade,--it’s nearly two years ago, I think--because a boy I slept with did tidy in it. We bought the papers at the first shop as was open, and then got leave of the deputy of the lodging-house to catch all the flies we could, and we stuck them thick on the paper, and fastened the paper to our hats. I used to think, when I was in service, how a smart livery hat, with a cockade to it, would look, but instead of that I turned out, the first time in my life that ever I sold anything, with my hat stuck round with flies. I felt so ashamed I could have cried. I was miserable, I felt so awkerd. But I spent my last 2_d._ in some gin and milk to give me courage, and that brightened me up a bit, and I set to work. I went Mile-end way, and got out of the main streets, and I suppose I’d gone into streets and places where there hadn’t often been fly-papers before, and I soon had a lot of boys following me, and I felt, almost, as if I’d picked a pocket, or done something to be ’shamed of. I could hardly cry ‘Catch ’em alive, only a halfpenny!’ But I found I could sell my papers to public-houses and shopkeepers, such as grocers and confectioners, and that gave me pluck. The boys caught flies, and then came up to me, and threw them against my hat, and if they stuck the lads set up a shout. I stuck to the trade, however, and took 2_s._ 6_d._ to 3_s._ every day that week, more than half of it profit, and on Saturday I took 5_s._ 6_d._ The trade is all to housekeepers. I called at open shops and looked up at the windows, or held up my hat at private houses, and was sometimes beckoned to go in and sell my papers. Women bought most, I think. ‘Nasty things,’ they used to say, ‘there’s no keeping nothing clean for them.’ I stuck to the trade for near two months, and then I was worth 13_s._ 6_d._, and had got a pair of good shoes, and a good second-hand shirt, with one to change it; and next I did a little in tins and hardware, at the places where I used to go my fly rounds, and in the winter I got into the crock-trade, with another young fellow for a mate, and I’m in it yet, and getting a tidy connection, I think.”
Some of the fly-paper sellers make their stock-in-trade, but three-fourths of the number buy them ready-made. The street-sellers make them of old newspapers or other waste-paper, no matter how dirty. To the paper they apply turpentine and common coach varnish, some using resin instead of varnish, and occasionally they dash a few grains of sugar over the composition when spread upon the paper.
Last summer, I was informed, there were fifty or sixty persons selling fly-papers and beetle wafers in the streets; some of them boys, and all of them of the general class of street-sellers, who “take” to any trade for which 1_s._ suffices as capital. Their average earnings may be estimated at 2_s._ 6_d._ a day, about one-half being profit. This gives a street outlay, say for a “season” of ten weeks, of 375_l._, calculating fifty sellers.
A few of these street traders carried a side of a newspaper, black with flies, attached to a stick, waving it like a flag. The cries were “Catch ’em alive! Catch ’em alive for 1/2_d._!” “New method of destroying thousands!”
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MISCELLANEOUS MANUFACTURED ARTICLES.
In addition to the more staple wares which form the street trade in manufactured articles of a miscellaneous character, are many, as I said before, which have been popular for a while and are now entirely disused. In the course of my inquiry it was remarkable how oblivious I found many of the street-sellers as to what they had sold at various periods. “O dear, yes sir, I’ve sold all sorts of things in the streets besides what I’m on now; first one and then another as promised a few pence,” was the substance of a remark I frequently heard; but _what_ was meant by the one and the other thing thus sold they had a difficulty to call to mind, but on a hint being thrown out they could usually give the necessary details. From the information I acquired I select the following curious matter.
Six or seven years ago _Galvanic Rings_ were sold extensively by the street-folk. These were clumsy lead-coloured things, which were described by the puffing shop-keepers, and in due course by the street-sellers, as a perfect amulet; a thing which by its mere contact with the finger would not only cure but prevent “fits, rheumatics, and cramps.” On my asking a man who had sold them if these were all the ailments of which he and the others proclaimed the galvanic rings an infallible cure, he answered: “Like the quack medicines you read about, sir, in ’vertisements, we said they was good for anything anybody complained of or was afraid was coming on them, but we went mostly for rheumatics. A sight of tin some of the shopkeepers must have made, for what we sold at 1_d._ they got 6_d._ a piece for. Then for gold galvanics--and I’ve been told they was gilt--they had 10_s._ 6_d._ each. The streets is nothing to the shops on a dodge. I’ve been told by people as I’d sold galvanics to, that they’d had benefit from them. I suppose that was just superstitious. I think Hyams did the most of any house in galvanics.”
The men selling these rings--for the business was carried on almost entirely by men--were the regular street-traders, who sell “first one thing and then another.” They were carried in boxes, as I have shown medals are now, and they generally formed a portion of the street-jeweller’s stock, whether he were itinerant or stationary. The purchasers were labourers in the open air, such as those employed about buildings, whose exposure to the alternations of heat and cold render them desirous of a cure for, or preventive against rheumatism. The costermongers were also purchasers, and in the course of my inquiries among that numerous body, I occasionally saw a galvanic ring still worn by a few, and those chiefly, I think, fish-sellers.
Nor was the street or shop trade in these galvanic rings confined to amulets for the finger. I heard of one elderly woman, then a prosperous street-seller in the New Cut, who slept with a galvanic ring on every toe, she suffered so much from cramp and rheumatism! There were also galvanic shields, which were to be tied round the waist, and warranted “to cure all over.” They were retailed at 6_d._ each. Galvanic earrings were likewise a portion of this manufacture. They were not “drops” from the ear, but filled behind and around it as regards the back of the skull, and were to avert rheumatic attacks, and even aching from the head. The street price was 1_s._ the pair. Galvanic bracelets, handsomely gilt, were 2_s._ 6_d._ the pair. But the sale of all these higher-priced charms was a mere nonentity compared to that of the penny rings.