Part 115
Another trade--if it may be classed under this head--carried on by great numbers and with great success for a while, was that of _cards with the Lord’s Prayer in the compass of a sixpence_. This was an engraving--now and then offered in the streets still--strictly fulfilling the announcement as to the compass in which the Prayer was contained, with the addition of a drawing of the Bible, as part of the engraving, “within the sixpence.” This trade was at first, I am told, chiefly in the hands of the patterers: “Grand novelty!” they said; “splendid engraving! The Lord’s Prayer, with a beautiful picture of the Bible, all legible to the naked eye, in the compass of a sixpence. Five hundred letters, all clear, on a sixpence.” One man said to me: “I knew very well there wasn’t 500, but it was a neat number to cry. A schoolmaster said to me once--‘Why, there isn’t above half that number of letters.’ He was wrong though; for I believe there’s 280.” This card was published six or seven years ago, and the success attending the sale of the Lord’s Prayer, led to the publication of the Belief in the same form. “When the trade was new,” said one man, “I could sell a gross in a day without any very great trouble; but in a little time there was hundreds in the trade, and one might patter hard to sell four dozen.”
The wholesale price was 8_s._ the gross, and as thirteen cards went to the dozen, the day’s profit when a gross was sold was 5_s._ When the sale did not extend to beyond four dozen the profit was 1_s._ 8_d._ A few cards “in letters of gold” were vended in the streets at 6_d._ each. They had large margins and presented a handsome appearance. The wholesale price was 3_s._ 6_d._ the dozen.
When this trade was at its height, there were, I am told, from 500 to 700 men, women and children engaged in it; selling the cards both with and without other articles. The cards had also a very extensive sale in the country.
_Pen-holders with glass or china handles_ are another commodity which appeared suddenly, about six months ago, in street commerce, and at once became the staple of a considerable traffic. These pens are eight or nine inches long, the “body,” so to speak, being of solid round glass, of almost all colours, green, blue, and black predominating, with a seal (lacquered white or yellow) at the top, and a holder of the usual kind, with a steel pen at the bottom. Some are made of white pot and called “China pens,” and of these some are ornamented with small paintings of flowers and leaves. These wares are German, and were first charged 9_s._ 6_d._ the gross, without pens, which were an additional 3_d._ at the swag-shops. The price is now 5_s._ the gross, the pens being the same. The street-sellers who were fortunate enough to “get a good start” with these articles did exceedingly well. The pen-holders, when new, are handsome-looking, and at 1_d._ each were cheap; some few were at first retailed at 2_d._ One man, I am told, sold two-and-a-half gross in one day in the neighbourhood of the Bank, purchasers not seldom taking a dozen or more. As the demand continued, some men connected with the supply of goods for street sale, purchased all the stock in the swag-shops, expending about 170_l._, and at once raised the price to 10_s._ 6_d._ the gross. This amount the poorer street-sellers demurred to give, as they could rarely obtain a higher price than 1_d._ each, and 2_d._ for the ornamented holders, but the street-stationers (who bought, however, very sparingly) and the small shopkeepers gave the advance “as they found the glass-holders asked for.” On the whole, I am told, this forestalling was not very profitable to the speculators, as when fresh supplies were received at the “swags,” the price fell.
At first this street business was carried on by men, but it was soon resorted to by numbers of poor women and children. One gentleman informed me that in consequence of reading “London Labour and the London Poor,” he usually had a little talk with the street-sellers of whom he purchased any trifle; he bought these pen-holders of ten or twelve different women and girls; all of them could answer correctly his inquiry as to the uses of the pens; but only one girl, of fifteen or sixteen, and she hesitatingly, ventured to assert that she could write her own name with the pen she offered for sale. The street-trade still continues, but instead of being in the hands of 400 individuals--as it was, at the very least, I am assured, at one period--there are now only about fifty carrying it on itinerantly, while with the “pitched” sales-people, the glass-holders are merely a portion of the stock, and with the itinerants ten dozen a week (a receipt of 10_s._, and a profit of 4_s._ 9_d._) is now an average sale. The former glass-holder sellers of the poorer sort are now vending oranges.
_Shirt Buttons_ form another of the articles--(generally either “useful things” or with such recommendation to street-buyers as the galvanic amulets possessed)--which every now and then are disposed of in great quantities in the streets. If an attempt be made by a manufacturer to establish a cheaper shirt button, for instance, of horn, or pot, or glass, and if it prove unsuccessful, or if an improvement be effected and the old stock becomes a sort of dead stock, the superseded goods have to be disposed of, and I am informed by a person familiar with those establishments, that the swag-shopkeepers can always find customers, “for anything likely,” with the indispensable proviso that it be cheap. In this way shirt buttons have lately been sold in the streets, not only by the vendors of small wares in their regular trade, but by men, lads, and girls, some of the males shirtless themselves, who sell them solely, with a continuous and monotonous cry of “Halfpenny a dozen; halfpenny a dozen.” The wholesale price of the last “street lot,” was 3_d._ the gross, or 1/4_d._ the dozen. To clear 6_d._ a day in shirt buttons is “good work;” it is more frequently 4_d._
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF WALKING-STICKS.
The walking-sticks sold in the streets of London are principally purchased at wholesale houses in Mint-street and Union-street, Borough, and their neighbourhoods. “There’s no street-trade,” said an intelligent man, “and I’ve tried most that’s been, or promised to be, a living in the streets, that is so tiresome as the walking-stick trade. There is nothing in which people are so particular. The stick’s sure to be either too short or too long, or too thick or too thin, or too limp or too stiff. You would think it was a simple thing for a man to choose a stick out of a lot, but if you were with me a selling on a fine Sunday at Battersea Fields, you’d see it wasn’t. O, it’s a tiresome job.”
The trade is a summer and a Sunday trade. The best localities are the several parks, and the approaches to them, Greenwich-park included; Hampstead Heath, Kennington Common, and, indeed, wherever persons congregate for pedestrian purposes, Battersea Fields being, perhaps, the place where the greatest Sunday trade is carried on. Some of the greater thoroughfares too, such as Oxford-street and the City-road, are a good deal frequented by the stick-sellers.
This trade--like others where the article sold is not of general consumption or primary usefulness--affords, what I once heard a street-seller call, “a good range.” There is no generally recognised price or value, so that a smart trader in sticks can apportion his offers, or his charges, to what he may think to be the extent of endurance in a customer. What might be 2_d._ to a man who “looked knowing,” might be 6_d._ to a man who “looked green.” The common sticks, which are the “cripples,” I was told, of all the sorts of sticks (the spoiled or inferior sticks) mixed with “common pines,” are 15_d._ the dozen. From this price there is a gradual scale up to 8_s._ the dozen for “good polished;” beyond that price the street-seller rarely ventures, and seldom buys even at that (for street-trade) high rate, as fourpenny and sixpenny sticks go off the best; these saleable sticks are generally polished hazel or pine. “I’ve sold to all sorts of people, sir,” said a stick-seller. “I once had some very pretty sticks, very cheap, only 2_d._ a piece, and I sold a good many to boys. They bought them, I suppose, to look like men, and daren’t carry them home; for I once saw a boy I’d sold a stick to, break it and throw it away just before he knocked at the door of a respectable house one Sunday evening. I’ve sold shilling sticks to gentlemen, sometimes, that had lost or broken or forgot their own. Canes there’s nothing done in now in the streets; nor in ‘vines,’ which is the little switchy things that used to be a sort of a plaything. There’s only one stick-man in the streets, as far as I know, I think--that has what you may call a capital in sticks. Only the other day I saw him sell a registered stick near Charing-cross. It was a beauty. A Bath cane, with a splendid ivory head, and a compass let into the ivory. The head screwed off, and beneath was a map of London and a Guide to the Great Exhibition. O, but he has a beautiful stock, and aint he aristocratic! ‘Ash twigs,’ with the light-coloured bark on them, not polished, but just trimmed, was a very good sale, but they’re not now. Why, as to what I take, it’s such a uncertain trade that it’s hard to say. Some days I haven’t taken 6_d._, and the most money I ever took was one Derby day at Epsom--I wish there was more Derby days, for poor people’s sakes--and then I took 30_s._ The most money as ever I took in London was 14_s._--one Sunday, in Battersea Fields, when I had a prime cheap stock of bamboos. When I keep entirely to the stick trade, and during the summer, I may take 35_s._ in a week, with a profit of 15_s._”
The street stick-sellers are, I am assured, sometimes about 200 in number, on a fine Sunday in the summer. Of these, some are dock-labourers, who thus add to their daily earnings by a seventh day’s labour; others, and a smarter class, are the “supers” (supernumeraries) of theatres, who also eke out their pittance by Sunday toil; porters, irregularly employed, and consequently “hard pushed to live,” also sell walking-sticks on the Sundays; as do others who “cannot afford”--as a well-educated man, a patterer on paper, once said to me--“to lose a day if they were d----d for it.” The usual mode of this street-trade is to carry the bundle of sticks strapped together, under the arm, and deposit the ends on the ground when a sale is to be effected. A few, however, and principally Jews, have “stands,” with the walking-sticks inclosed in a sort of frame. On the Mondays there are not above a third of the number of stick-sellers there are on the Sundays; and on the other days of the week not above a seventh, or an eighth. Calculating that for 12 weeks of the year there are every day 35 stick-sellers, each taking, on an average, 30_s._ a week (with a profit, individually, of about 12_s._), we find 630_l._ expended in walking-sticks in the streets.
On clear winter days a stick-seller occasionally plies his trade, but on frosty days they are occupied in letting out skates in the parks, or wherever ponds are frozen.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF WHIPS, ETC.
These traders are a distinct class from the stick-sellers, and have a distinct class of customers. The sale is considerable; for to many the possession of a whip is a matter of importance. If one be lost or stolen, for instance, from a butcher’s cart at Newgate-market, the need of a whip to proceed with the cart and horse to its destination, prompts the purchase in the quickest manner, and this is usually effected of the street-seller who offers his wares to the carters at every established resort.
The commonest of the whips sold to cart-drivers is sometimes represented as whalebone covered with gut; but the whalebone is a stick, and the flexible part is a piece of leather, while the gut is a sort of canvas, made to resemble the worked gut of the better sort of whips, and is pasted to the stock; the thong--which in the common sort is called “four strands,” or plaits--being attached to the flexible part. Some of these whips are old stocks recovered, and many are sad rubbish; but for any deceit the street-seller can hardly be considered responsible, as he always purchases at the shop of a wholesale whipmaker, who is in some cases a retailer at the same price and under the same representations as the street-seller. The retail price is 1_s._ each; the wholesale, 8_s._ and 9_s._ a dozen. Some of the street whip-sellers represent themselves as the makers, but the whips are almost all made in Birmingham and Walsall.
[Illustration: THE STREET-SELLER OF WALKING-STICKS.
[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]
Of these traders very few are the ordinary street-sellers. Most of them have been in some way or other connected with the care of horses, and some were described to me as “beaten-out countrymen,” who had come up to town in the hope of obtaining employment, and had failed. One man, of the last-mentioned class, told me that he had come to London from a village in Cambridgeshire, bringing with him testimonials of good character, and some letters from parties whose recommendation he expected would be serviceable to him; but he had in vain endeavoured for some months to obtain work with a carrier, omnibus proprietor, or job-master, either as driver or in charge of horses. His prospects thus failing him, he was now selling whips to earn his livelihood. A friend advised him to do this, as better than starving, and as being a trade that he understood:--
“I often thought I’d be forced to go back home, sir,” he said, “and I’d have been ashamed to do ’t, for I _would_ come to try my luck in London, and would leave a place I had. All my friends--and they’re not badly off--tried to ’suade me to stop at home another year or two, but come I would, as if I must and couldn’t help it. I brought good clothes with me, and they’re a’most all gone; and I’d be ashamed to go back so shabby, like the prodigal’s son; you know, sir. I’ll have another try yet, for I get on to a cab next Monday, with a very respectable cab-master. As I’ve only myself, I know I can do. I was on one, but not with the same master, after I’d been six weeks here; but in two days I was forced to give it up, for I didn’t know my way enough, and I didn’t know the distances, and couldn’t make the money I paid for my cab. If I asked another cabman, he was as likely to tell me wrong as right. Then the fares used to be shouting out, ‘I say, cabby, where the h---- are you going? I told you Mark-lane, and here we are at the Minories. Drive back, sir.’ I know my way now well enough, sir. I’ve walked the streets too long not to know it. I notice them on purpose now, and know the distances. I’ve written home for a few things for my new trade, and I’m sure to get them. They don’t know I’m selling whips. There would be such a laugh against me among all t’ young fellows if they did. Me as was so sure to do well in London!
“It’s a poor trade. A carman’ll bid me 6_d._ for such a whip as this, which is 4_s._ 3_d._ the half dozen wholesale. ‘I have to find my own whips,’ my last customer said, ‘though I drives for a stunning grocer, and be d----d to him.’ They’re great swearers some of them. I make 7_s._ or 8_s._ in a week, for I can walk all day without tiring. I one week cleared 14_s._ Next week I made 3_s._ I _have_ slept in cheap lodging-houses--but only in three: one was very decent, though out of the way; one was middling; and the t’other was a pig-sty. I’ve seen very poor places in the country, but nothing to it. I now pay 2_s._ a week for a sort of closet, with a bed in it, at the top of a house, but it’s clean and sweet; and my landlord’s a greengrocer and coal-merchant and firewood-seller;--he’s a good man--and I can always earn a little against the rent with him, by cleaning his harness, and grooming his pony--he calls it a pony, but it’s over 15 hands--and greasing his cart-wheels, and mucking out his stable, and such like. I shall live there when I’m on my cab.”
Other carmen’s whips are 1_s._ 6_d._, and as high as 2_s._ 6_d._, but the great sale is of those at 1_s_. The principal localities for the trade are at the meat-markets, the “green markets,” Smithfield, the streets leading to Billingsgate when crowded in the morning, the neighbourhood of the docks and wharfs, and the thoroughfares generally.
The trade in the other kind of whips is again in the hands of another class, in that of cabmen who have lost their licence, who have been maimed, and the numerous “hands” who job about stables--especially cab-horse stables--when without other employment. The price of the inferior sort of “gig-whips” is 1_s._ to 1_s._ 6_d._, the wholesale price being from 9_s._ 6_d._ to 14_s._ 6_d._ the dozen. Some are lower than 9_s._ 6_d._, but the cabmen, I am told, “will hardly look at them; they know what they’re a-buying of, and is wide awake, and that’s one reason why the profit’s so small.” Occasionally, one whip-seller told me, he had sold gig-whips at 2_s._ or 2_s._ 6_d._ to gentlemen who had broken their “valuable lance-wood,” or “beautiful thorn,” and who made a temporary purchase until they could buy at their accustomed shops. “A military gent, with mustachers, once called to me in Piccadilly,” the same man stated, “and he said, ‘Here, give me the best you can for half-a-crown, I’ve snapped my own. I never use the whip when I drive, for my horse is skittish and won’t stand it, but I can’t drive without one.’”
In the height of the season, two, and sometimes three men, sell handsome gig-whips at the fashionable drives or the approaches. “I have taken as much as 30_s._ in a day, for three whips,” said one man, “each 10_s._; but they were silver-mounted thorn, and very cheap indeed; that’s 8 or 9 years back; people looks oftener at 10_s._ now. I’ve sold horse-dealers’ whips too, with loaded ends. Oh, all prices. I’ve bought them, wholesale, at 8_s._ a dozen, and 7_s._ 6_d._ a piece. Hunting whips are never sold in the streets now. I have sold them, but it’s a good while ago, as riding whips for park gentlemen. The stocks were of fine strong lancewood--such a close grain! with buck horn handles, and a close-worked thong, fastened to the stock by an ‘eye’ (loop), which it’s slipped through. You could hear its crack half a mile off. ‘Threshing machines,’ I called them.”
All the whip-sellers in a large way visit the races, fairs, and large markets within 50 miles of London. Some go as far as Goodwood at the race-time, which is between 60 and 70 miles distant. On a well-thronged race-ground these men will take 3_l._ or 4_l._ in a day, and from a half to three-fourths as much at a country fair. They sell riding-whips in the country, but seldom in town.
An experienced man knew 40 whip-sellers, as nearly as he could call them to mind, by sight, and 20 by name. He was certain that on no day were there fewer than 30 in the streets, and sometimes--though rarely--there were 100. The most prosperous of the body, including their profits at races, &c., make 1_l._ a week the year through; the poorer sort from 5_s._ to 10_s._, and the latter are three times as numerous as the others. Averaging that only 30 whip-sellers take 25_s._ each weekly (with profits of from 5_s._ to 10_s._) in London alone, we find 1,950_l._ expended in the streets in whips.
Some of the whip-sellers vend whipcord, also, to those cabmen and carters who “cord” their own whips. The whipcord is bought wholesale at 2_s._ the pound (sometimes lower), and sold at 1/2_d._ the knot, there being generally six dozen knots in a pound.
Another class “mend” cabmen’s whips, re-thonging, or “new-springing” them, but these are street-artisans.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF PIPES, AND OF SNUFF AND TOBACCO BOXES.
The pipes now sold in the streets and public-houses are the “china bowls” and the “comic heads.” The “china-bowl” pipe has a bowl of white stone china, which unscrews, from a flexible tube or “stem,” as it is sometimes called, about a foot long, with an imitation-amber mouth-piece. They are retailed at 6_d._ each, and cost 4_s._ a dozen at the swag-shops. The “comic heads” are of the clay ordinarily used in the making of pipes, and cost 16_d._ the dozen, or 15_s._ the gross. They are usually retailed at 2_d._ Some of the “comic heads” may be considered as hardly well described by the name, as among them are death’s-heads and faces of grinning devils. “The best sale of the comic heads,” said one man, “was when the Duke put the soldiers’ pipes out at the barracks; wouldn’t allow them to smoke there. It was a Wellington’s head with his thumb to his nose, taking a sight, you know, sir. They went off capital. Lots of people that liked their pipe bought ’em, in the public-houses especial, ’cause, as I heerd one man--he was a boot-closer--say, ‘it made the old boy a-ridiculing of hisself.’ At that time--well, really, then, I can’t say how long it’s since--I sold little bone ‘tobacco-stoppers’--they’re seldom asked for now, stoppers is quite out of fashion--and one of them was a figure of ‘old Nosey,’ the Duke you know--it was intended as a joke, you see, sir; a tobacco-_stopper_.”
There are now nine men selling pipes, which they frequently raffle at the public-houses; it is not unusual for four persons to raffle at 1/2_d._ each, for a “comic head.” The most costly pipes are not now offered in the streets, but a few are sold on race-courses. I am informed that none of the pipe-sellers depend entirely upon their traffic in those wares, but occasionally sell (and raffle) such things as china ornaments or table-covers, or tobacco or snuff-boxes. If, therefore, we calculate that four persons sell pipes daily the year through, taking each 25_s._ (and clearing 10_s._), we find 260_l._ yearly expended upon the hawkers’ pipes.