Part 116

The snuff and tobacco-boxes disposed of by street-traders, for they are usually sold by the same individual, are bought at the swag-shops. In a matter of traffic, such as snuff-boxes, in which the “fancy” (or taste) of the purchaser is freely exercised, there are of course many varieties. The exterior of some presents a series of transverse lines, coloured, and looking neat enough. Others have a staring portrait of the Queen, or of “a young lady,” or a brigand, or a man inhaling the pungent dust with evident delight; occasionally the adornment is a ruin, a farm-house, or a hunting scene. The retail price is from 4_d._ to 1_s._, and the wholesale 3_s._ to 7_s._ 6_d._ the dozen. The Scotch boxes, called “Holyroods” in the trade, are also sold in the streets and public-houses. These are generally the “self-colour” of the wood; the better sort are lined with horn, and are, or should be, remarkable for the closeness and nice adjustment of the hinges or joints. They are sold--some I was told being German-made--at the swag-shops at 3_s._ the dozen, or 4_d._ each, to 6_s._ the dozen, or 8_d._ each. “Why, I calc’lated,” said one box-seller, “that one week when I was short of tin, and had to buy single boxes, or twos, at a time, to keep up a fair show of stock, the swags got 2_s._ more out of me than if I could have gone and bought by the dozen. I once ventured to buy a very fine Holyrood; it’ll take a man three hours to find out the way to open it, if he doesn’t know the trick, the joints is so contrived. But I have it yet. I never could get an offer for what it cost me, 5_s._”

The tobacco-boxes are of brass and iron (though often called “steel”). There are three sizes: the “quarter-ounce,” costing 3_s._ the dozen; the “half-ounce,” 4_s._ 3_d._; and “the ounce,” 5_s._ 6_d._ the dozen, or 6-1/2_d._ each. These are the prices of the brass. The iron, which are “sized” in the same way, are from 2_s._ to 3_s._ 6_d._ the dozen, wholesale. They are retailed at from 3_d._ to 6_d._ each, the brass being retailed at from 4_d._ to 1_s._ All these boxes are opened and shut by pressure on a spring; they are partly flat (but rounded), so as to fit in any pocket. The cigar-cases are of the same quality as the snuff-boxes (not the Holyroods), and cost, at the German swag-shops, 3_s._ 6_d._ the dozen, or 4-1/2_d._ each. They are usually retailed, or raffled for on Saturday and Monday nights, at 6_d._ each, but the trade is a small one.

One branch of this trade, concerning which I heard many street-sellers very freely express their opinions, is the sale of “indecent snuff-boxes.” Most of these traders insisted, with a not unnatural bitterness, that it would be as easy to stop the traffic as it was to stop Sunday selling in the park, but then “gentlemen was accommodated by it,” they added. These boxes and cigar-cases are, for the most part, I am told, French, the lowest price being 2_s._ 6_d._ a box. One man, whose information was confirmed to me by others, gave me the following account of what had come within his own knowledge:--

“There’s eight and sometimes nine persons carrying on the indecent trade in snuff-boxes and cigar-cases. They make a good bit of money, but they’re drunken characters, and often hard up. They’ve neither shame nor decency; they’ll tempt lads or anybody. They go to public-houses which they know is used by fast gents that has money to spare. And they watch old and very young gents in the streets, or any gents indeed, and when they see them loitering and looking after the girls, they take an opportunity to offer a ‘spicy snuff-box, very cheap.’ It’s a trade only among rich people, for I believe the indecent sellers can’t afford to sell at all under 2_s._ 6_d._, and they ask high prices when they get hold of a green ’un; perhaps one up on a spree from Oxford or Cambridge. Well, I can’t say where they get their goods, nor at what price. That’s their secret. They carry them in a box, with proper snuff-boxes to be seen when its opened, and the others in a secret drawer beneath; or in their pockets. You may have seen a stylish shop in Oxford-street, and in the big window is large pipe heads of a fine quality, and on them is painted, quite beautiful, naked figures of women, and there’s snuff-boxes and cigar-cases of much the same sort, but they’re nothing to what these men sell. I must know, for it’s not very long since I was forced, through distress, to colour a lot of the figures. I could colour 50 a day. I hadn’t a week’s work at it. I don’t know what they make; perhaps twice as much in a day, as in the regular trade can be made in a week. I was told by one of them that one race day he took 15_l._ It’s not every day they do a good business, for sometimes they may hawk without ever showing their boxes; but gentlemen will have them if they pay ever so much for them. There’s a risk in the trade, certainly. Sometimes the police gets hold of them, but very very seldom, and it’s 3 months. Or if the Vice Society takes it up, it may be 12 months. The two as does best in the trade are women; they carry great lots. They’ve never been apprehended, and they’ve been in the trade for years. No, I should say they was not women of the town. They’re both living with men, but the men’s not in the same trade, and I think is in no trade; just fancy men. So I’ve understood.”

I may observe that the generality of the hawkers of indecent prints and cards are women.

There are about 35 persons selling snuff and tobacco-boxes--the greatest sale being of tobacco-boxes--and cigar-cases, generally with the other things I have mentioned. Of these 35, however, not one-half sell snuff-boxes constantly, but resort to any traffic of temporary interest in the public or street-public estimation. Some sell only in the evenings. Reckoning that 15 persons on snuff and tobacco and cigar boxes alone take 18_s._ weekly (clearing 7_s._ or 8_s._), we find 702_l._ thus expended.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF CIGARS.

Cigars, I am informed, have constituted a portion of the street-trade for upwards of 20 years, having been introduced not long after the removal of the prohibition on their importation from Cuba. It was not, however, until five or six years later that they were at all extensively sold in the streets; but the street-trade in cigars is no longer extensive, and in some respects has ceased to exist altogether.

I am told by experienced persons that the cigars first vended in the streets and public-houses were really smuggled. I say “really” smuggled, as many now vended under that pretence never came from the smuggler’s hands. “Well, now, sir,” said one man, “the last time I sold Pickwicks and Cubers a penny apiece with lights for nothing, was at Greenwich Fair, on the sly rather, and them as I could make believe was buying a smuggled thing, bought far freer. Everybody likes a smuggled thing.” [This remark is only in consonance with what I have heard from others of the same class.] “In my time I’ve sold what was smuggled, or made to appear as sich, but far more in the country than town, to all sorts--to gentlemen, and ladies, and shopkeepers, and parsons, and doctors, and lawyers. Why no, sir, I can’t say as how I ever sold anything in that way to an exciseman. But smuggling’ll always be liked; it’s sich a satisfaction to any man to think he’s done the tax-gatherer.”

The price of a cigar, in the earlier stages of the street-traffic, was 2_d._ and 3_d._ One of the boxes in which these wares are ordinarily packed was divided by a partition, the one side containing the higher, and the other the lower priced article. The division was often a mere trick of trade--in justification of which any street-seller would be sure to cite the precedent of shopkeepers’ practices--for the cigars might be the same price (wholesale) but the bigger and better-looking were selected as “threepennies,” the “werry choicest and realest Hawanners, as mild as milk, and as strong as gunpowder,” for such, I am told, was the cry of a then well-known street-trader. The great sale was of the “twopennies.” As the fuzees, now so common, were unknown, and lucifer matches were higher-priced, and much inferior to what they are at present, the cigar seller in most instances carried tow with him, a portion of which he kept ignited in a sort of tinder-box, and at this the smokers lighted their cigars; or the vender twisted together a little tow and handed it, ignited, to a customer, that if he were walking on he might renew his “light,” if the cigar “wouldn’t draw.”

A cheaper cigar soon found its way into street commerce, “only a penny apiece, prime cigars;” and on its first introduction, a straw was fitted into it, as a mouth-piece. “Cigar tubes” were also sold in the streets; they were generally of bone, and charged from 2_d._ to 1_s._ each. The cigar was fitted into the tube, and they were strongly recommended on the score of economy, as “by means of this tube, any gen’l’man can smoke his cigar to half a quarter of an inch, instead of being forced to throw it away with an inch and a half left.” These tubes have not for a long time been vended in the streets. I am told by a person, who himself was then engaged in the sale, that the greatest number of penny cigars ever sold in the streets in one day was on that of her Majesty’s coronation (June 28, 1838). Of this he was quite positive from what he had experienced, seen, and heard.

“In my opinion,” said another street-seller, “the greatest injury the street-trade in such things had was when the publicans took to selling cigars. They didn’t at first, at least not generally; I’ve sold cigars myself, at the bars of respectable houses, to gentlemen that was having their glass of ale with a friend, and one has said to another, ‘Come, we’ll have a smoke,’ and has bought a couple. O, no; I never was admitted to offer them in a parlour or tap-room; that would have interfered with the order for ‘screws’ (penny papers of tobacco), which is a rattling good profit, I can tell you. Indeed, I was looked shy at, from behind the bar; but if customers chose to buy, a landlord could hardly interfere. Now, it’s no go at all in such places.”

One common practice among the smarter street-seller, when “on cigars,” was, until of late years, and still is, occasionally at races and fairs, to possess themselves of a few really choice “weeds,” as like as they could procure them to their stock-in-trade, and to smoke one of them, as they urged their traffic.

The aroma was full and delicate, and this was appealed to if necessary, or, as one man worded it, the smell was “left to speak for itself.” The street-folk who prefer the sale of what is more or less a luxury, become, by the mere necessities of their calling, physiognomists and quick observers, and I have no reason to doubt the assertion of one cigar-vendor, when he declared that in the earlier stages of this traffic he could always, and most unerringly in the country, pick out the man on whose judgment others seemed to rely, and by selling him one of his choice reserve, procure a really impartial opinion as to its excellence, and so influence other purchasers. When the town trade “grew stale”--the usual term for its falling-off--the cigar-sellers had a remunerative field in many parts of the country.

In London, before railways became the sole means of locomotion to a distance, the cigar-sellers frequented the coaching-yards; and the “outsides” frequently “bought a cigar to warm their noses of a cold night,” and sometimes filled their cases, if the cigar-seller chanced to have the good word of the coachman or guard.

The cigar street-trade was started by two Jews, brothers, named Benasses, who were “licensed to deal in tobacco,” and vended good articles. When they relinquished the open-air business, they supplied the other street-sellers, whose numbers increased very rapidly. The itinerant cigar-vending was always principally in the hands of the Jews, but the general street-traders resorted to the traffic on all occasions of public resort,--“sich times,” observed one, “as fairs and races, and crownations, and Queen’s weddings; I wish they came a bit oftener for the sake of trade.” The manufacture of the cigars sold at the lowest rates, is now almost entirely in the hands of the Jews, and I am informed by a distinguished member of that ancient faith, that when I treat of the Hebrew children, employed in _making_ cigars, there will be much to be detailed of which the public have little cognisance and little suspicion.

The cigars in question are bought (wholesale) in Petticoat-lane, Rosemary-lane, Ailie-street, Tenter-ground, in Goodman’s-fields, and similar localities. The kinds in chief demand are Pickwicks, 7_s._ and 8_s._ per lb.; Cubas, 8_s._ 6_d._; common Havannahs and Bengal Cheroots, the same price; but the Bengal Cheroots are not uncommonly smuggled.

“The best places for cigar-selling,” one man stated, “I’ve always found to be out of town; about Greenwich and Shooter’s Hill, and to the gents going to Kensington Gardens, and such like places. About the Eagle Tavern was good, too, as well as the streets leading to the Surrey Zoological--one could whisper, ‘cheap cigar, sir, half what they’ll charge you inside.’ I’ve known young women treat their young men to cigars as they were going to Cremorne, or other public places; but there’s next to no trade that way now, and hasn’t been these five or six years. I don’t know what stopped it exactly. I’ve heard it was shop-keepers that had licences, complaining of street people as hadn’t, and so the police stopped the trade as much as they could.”

At all the neighbouring races and fairs, and at any great gathering of people in town, cigars are sold, more with the affectation than the reality of its being done, “quite on the sly.” The retail price is 1_d._ each, and three for 2_d._ Some of the cheap cigars are made to run 200, and even as high as 230 to the pound. A fuzee is often given into the bargain.

I am told that, on all favourable opportunities, there are still 100 persons who vend cigars in the streets of London, while a greater number of “London hands” carry on the trade at Epsom and Ascot races. At other periods the business is all but a nonentity. To clear 1_l._ a week is considered “good work.” At one period, on every fine Sunday, there were not, I am assured, fewer than 500 persons selling cigars in the open air in London and its suburbs.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SPONGE.

This is one of the street-trades which has been long in the hands of the Jews, and, unlike the traffic in pencils, sealing-wax, and other articles of which I have treated, it remains so principally still.

In perhaps no article which is a regular branch of the street-trade, is there a greater diversity in the price and quality than in sponge. The street-sellers buy it at 1_s._ (occasionally 6_d._), and as high as 21_s._ the pound. At one time, I believe about 20 years back, when fine sponge in large pieces was scarce and dear, some street-sellers gave 28_s._ the pound, or, in buying a smaller quantity, 2_s._ an ounce.

“I have sold sponge of all sorts,” said an experienced street-seller, “both ‘fine toilet,’ fit for any lady or gentleman, and coarse stuff not fit to groom a ass with. That very common sponge is mostly 1_s._ the lb. wholesale, but it’s no manner of use, it’s so sandy and gritty. It weighs heavy, or there might be a better profit on it. It has to be trimmed up and damped for showing it, and then it always feels hask (harsh) to the hand. It rubs to bits in no time. There was a old gent what I served with sponges, and he was very perticler, and the best customer I ever had, for his housekeeper bought her leathers of me. Like a deal of old coves that has nothing to do and doesn’t often stir out, but hidles away time in reading or pottering about a garden, he was fond of a talk, and he’d give me a glass of something short, as if to make me listen to him, for I used to get fidgety, and he’d talk away stunning. He’s dead now. He’s told me, and more nor once, that sponges was more of a animal than a wegetable,” continued the incredulous street-seller, “I do believe people reads theirselves silly. Such ---- nonsense! Does it look like a animal? Where’s its head and its nose? He’d better have said it was a fish. And it’s not a wegetable neither. But I’ll tell you what it is, sir, and from them as has seen it where its got with their own eyes. I have some relations as is sea-farin’-men, and I went a woyage once myself when a lad--one of my relations has seen it gathered by divers, I forget where, from the rocks at the bottom and shores of the sea, and he says it’s just sea-moss--stuff as grows there, as moss does to old walls in England. That’s what it is, sir. As it’s grown in the water, it holds water you see. I’ve made 15_s._ on sponge alone, in a good week, when I had a good stock; but oftener I’ve made only 10_s._, and sometimes not 5_s._ My best trade is at private houses a little ways out of town. I’ve heard gents say, ‘A good sponging’s as good as a bath,’ and when I could get good things cheap they’d be sure to sell. No, I never did much at the mews.”

Another man told me that he once bought a large quantity of sponge at 6_d._ the lb., trimmed it up as well as he could, and got a man to help him, and the two “worked it off” in barrows; there was six barrows full, and as one was emptied it was replenished. It was sold at 1_d._ and 2_d._ a lump; about twenty lumps, or pieces, going to a pound, so that there was 14_d._ profit on what cost 6_d._, even on the penny lumps. He had forgotten the exact amount he cleared, and he and his mate sold it all in one summer’s evening, but it was somewhere about 10_s._ This happened some years ago, when the common sponge, which I heard called also “honeycomb” sponge, was not so “blown upon,” as my informant expressed it, as it is now. On my asking this man as to the proportion of Jews in this trade, he answered: “Well, many a day I’m satisfied there’s 100 people selling sponge, and I should say that for every ten or twelve Jews is one Christian, and half of them, or more, has been in some sort of service, I mean the Christians has, most likely stable-helpers, and they supplies the mews and the job and livery stables, such of them as requires men to find their own sponges, but that’s only a few; sponges is mostly bought for such places at the saddlers’ and other shops. In my opinion, sir, Jews is better Christians than Christians themselves, for _they_ help one another, and we don’t. I’ve been helped by a Jew myself, without any connection with them. They’re terrible keen hands at a bargain, though.”

The sponge in the street-trade is purchased, wholesale, chiefly in Houndsditch. The wholesale trade in sponge, I may add, is also in the hands of the Jews. The great mart is Smyrna, the best qualities being gathered in the islands of the Greek Archipelago. The sponge is carried by the street-traders in baskets, the bearer holding a specimen piece or two in his hand. Smaller pieces are sometimes carried in nets, and nets were more frequently in use for this purpose than at present. It is nearly all sold by itinerants, in the business parts as well as the suburbs, the purchasers being “shopkeepers, innkeepers, gentlemen, and gentlemen’s servants.” Sometimes low-priced sponge is offered in a street-market on a Saturday or Monday night, but very rarely, as it is a thing little used by the poor. A little is sold to the cabmen at their stands. The sponge-sellers, I may add, when going a regular round, offer their wares to any passer-by. A little is done by the Jews in bartering sponge for old clothes. There are five or six women in the trade.

I have reason to believe that the estimate of my informant, as to the number of sponge-sellers, is correct. But some sell sponge only occasionally, some make it only a portion of their business, and others vend it only when they “have it a bargain.” Calculating, then, that only fifty persons (so allowing for the irregularities in the trade) vend sponge daily, and that each takes 15_s._ weekly,--some taking 25_s._, and others but 5_s._--with about half profit on the whole (the common sponge is often from 200 to 300 per cent. profit), we find the outlay to be 1,950_l._

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF WASH-LEATHERS.

The wash-leathers, sometimes called “shammys” (chamois), now sold extensively in the streets, are for the most part the half of a sheep-skin, or of a larger lamb-skin. The skin is “split” by machinery, and to a perfect nicety, into two portions. That known as the “grain” (the part to which the fleece of the animal is attached) is very thin, and is dressed into a “skiver,” a kind of leather used in the commoner requirements of book-binding, and for such purposes as the lining of hats. The other portion, the “flesh,” is dressed as wash-leather. These skins are bought at the leather-sellers and the leather-dressers, at from 2_s._ to 20_s._ the dozen. The higher priced, or those from 12_s._ are often entire, and not “split” skins. The great majority of the street-sellers of wash-leathers are women, and principally Irishwomen. They offer their wash-leathers in all parts of town, calling at shops and inns; and at private houses offering them through the area rails, or knocking at the door when it is accessible. Many of these street-sellers are the wives of Irish labourers, employed by bricklayers and others, who are either childless, or able to leave their younger children under the care of an older brother or sister, or when the poverty of the parents, or their culpable neglect, is extreme, allow them to run at large in the court or street, untended. The wives by this street-trade add to the husbands’ earnings. In the respects of honesty and chastity, these women bear good characters.

The wash-leathers are sold for the cleaning of windows, and of plate and metal goods. Sixpence is a common price for a leather, the higher priced being sold at the mews and at gentlemen’s houses. The “chamois” sold at the mews, however, are not often sold by the Irishwomen, but by the class I have described as selling scissors, &c., there. The leathers are also cut into pennyworths, and these pennyworths are sometimes sold on Saturday evenings in the street-markets.