Part 30

In the above return wild ducks and woodcocks are not included, because the quantity sent to London is dependent entirely upon the severity of the winter. With the costers wild ducks are a favourite article of trade, and in what those street tradesmen would pronounce a favourable season for wild ducks, which means a very hard winter, the number sold in London will, I am told, equal that of pheasants (64,000). The great stock of wild ducks for the London tables is from Holland, where the duck decoys are objects of great care. Less than a fifth of the importation from Holland is from Lincolnshire. These birds, and even the finest and largest, have been sold during a glut at 1_s._ each. Woodcocks, under similar circumstances, number with plovers (45,000), nearly all of which are “golden plovers;” but of woodcocks the costermongers buy very few: “They’re only a mouthful and a half,” said one of them, “and don’t suit our customers.” In severe weather a few ptarmigan are sent to London from Scotland, and in 1841-2 great numbers were sent to the London markets from Norway. One salesman received nearly 10,000 ptarmigan in one day. A portion of these were disposed of to the costers, but the sale was not such as to encourage further importations.

The returns I give show, that, at the two great game and poultry-markets, 5,500,000 birds and animals, wild and tame, are yearly sent to London. To this must be added all that may be consigned direct to metropolitan game-dealers and poulterers, besides what may be sent as presents from the country, &c., so that the London supply may be safely estimated, I am assured, at 6,000,000.

It is difficult to arrive at any very precise computation of the quantity of game and poultry sold by the costers, or rather at the money value (or price) of what they sell. The most experienced salesmen agree, that, as to _quantity_, including everything popularly considered game (and I have so given it in the return), they sell one-third. As regards _value_, however, their purchases fall very short of a third. Of the best qualities of game, and even more especially of poultry, a third of the hawkers may buy a fifteenth, compared with their purchases in the lower-priced kinds. The others buy none of the best qualities. The more “aristocratic” of the poultry-hawkers will, as a rule, only buy, “when they have an order” or a sure sale, the best quality of English turkey-cocks; which cannot be wondered at, seeing that the average price of the English turkey-cock is 12_s._ One salesman this year sold (at Leadenhall) several turkey-cocks at 30_s._ each, and one at 3_l._ The average price of an English turkey-hen is 4_s._ 6_d._, and of these the costers buy a few: but their chief trade is in foreign turkey-hens; of which the average price (when of good quality and in good condition) is 3_s._ The foreign turkey-cocks average half the price of the English (or 6_s._). Of Dorking fat chickens, which average 6_s._ the couple, the hawkers buy none (save as in the case of the turkey-cocks); but of the Irish fowls, which, this season, have averaged 2_s._ 6_d._ the couple, they buy largely. On the other hand they buy nearly all the rabbits sent from Scotland, and half of those sent from Ostend, while they “clear the market”--no matter of what the glut may consist--when there _is_ a glut. There is another distinction of which the hawker avails himself. The average price of young plump partridges is 2_s._ 6_d._ the brace, of old partridges, 2_s._; accordingly, the coster buys the old. It is the same with pheasants, the young averaging 7_s._ the brace, the old 6_s._: “And I can sell them best,” said one man; “for my customers say they’re more tastier-like. I’ve sold game for twelve years, or more, but I never tasted any of any kind, so I can’t say who’s right and who’s wrong.”

The hawkers buy, also, game and poultry which will not “keep” another day. Sometimes they puff out the breast of a chicken with fresh pork fat, which melts as the bird roasts. “It freshens the fowl, I’ve been told, and improves it,” said one man; “and the shopkeepers now and then, does the same. It’s a improvement, sir.”

In the present season the costers have bought of wild ducks, comparatively, none, and of teal, widgeons, wild birds, and larks, none at all; or so sparely, as to require no notice.

OF THE STREET-PURCHASERS OF GAME AND POULTRY.

As the purchasers of game and poultry are of a different class to the costermongers’ ordinary customers, I may devote a few words to them. From all the information that I could acquire, they appear to consist, principally, of those who reside at a distance from any cheap market, and buy a cheap luxury when it is brought to their doors, as well as of those who are “always on the look-out for something toothy, such as the shabby genteels, as they’re called, who never gives nothing but a scaly price. They’ve bargained with me till I was hard held from pitching into them, and over and over again I should, only it would have been fourteen days anyhow. They’ll tell me my birds stinks, when they’re as sweet as flowers. They’d go to the devil to save three farthings on a partridge.” Other buyers are old gourmands, living perhaps on small incomes, or if possessed of ample incomes, but confining themselves to a small expenditure; others, again, are men who like a cheap dinner, and seldom enjoy it, at their own cost, unless it be cheap, and who best of all like “such a thing as a moor bird (grouse),” said one hawker, “which can be eat up to a man’s own cheek.” This was also the opinion of a poulterer and game-dealer, who sometimes sold “goods” to the hawkers. Of this class of “patrons” many shopkeepers, in all branches of business, have a perfect horror, as they will care nothing for having occupied the tradesmen’s time to no purpose.

The game and poultry street-sellers, I am told, soon find out when a customer is bent upon a bargain, and shape their prices accordingly. Although these street-sellers may generally take as their motto the announcement so often seen in the shops of competitive tradesmen, “no reasonable offer refused,” they are sometimes so worried in bargaining that they _do_ refuse.

In a conversation I had with a “retired” game salesman, he said it might be curious to trace the history of a brace of birds--of grouse, for instance--sold in the streets; and he did it after this manner. They were shot in the Highlands of Scotland by a member of parliament who had gladly left the senate for the moors. They were transferred to a tradesman who lived in or near some Scotch town having railway communication, and with whom “the honourable gentleman,” or “the noble lord,” had perhaps endeavoured to drive a hard bargain. He (the senator) _must_ have a good price for his birds, as he had given a large sum for the moor: and the season was a bad one: the birds were scarce and wild: they would soon be “packed” (be in flocks of twenty or thirty instead of in broods), and then there would be no touching a feather of them. The canny Scot would quietly say that it was early in the season, and the birds never packed so early; that as to price, he could only give what he could get from a London salesman, and he was “nae just free to enter into any agreement for a fixed price at a’.” The honourable gentleman, after much demurring, gives way, feeling perhaps that he cannot well do anything else. In due course the grouse are received in Leadenhall, and unpacked and flung about with as little ceremony as if they had been “slaughtered” by a Whitechapel journeyman butcher, at so much a head. It is a thin market, perhaps, when they come to hand. A dealer, fashionable in the parish of St. George, Hanover-square, has declined to give the price demanded; they were not his money; “he had to give such long credit.” A dealer, popular in the ward of Cheap, has also declined to buy, and for the same alleged reason. The salesman, knowing that some of these dealers _must_ buy, quietly says that he will take no less, and as he is known to be a man of his word, little is said upon the subject. As the hour arrives at which fashionable game-dealers are compelled to buy, or disappoint customers who will not brook such disappointment, the market, perhaps, is glutted, owing to a very great consignment by a later railway train. The _Inverness Courier_, or the _North of Scotland Gazette_, are in due course quoted by the London papers, touching the “extraordinary sport” of a party of lords and gentlemen in the Highlands; and the “heads” of game are particularized with a care that would do honour to a _Price Current_. The salesman then disposes rapidly of divers “brace” to the “hawkers,” at 1_s._ or 2_s._ the brace, and the hawker offers them to hotel-keepers, and shop-keepers, and housekeepers, selling some at 3_s._ 6_d._ the brace, some at 3_s._, at 2_s._ 6_d._, at 2_s._, and at less. “At last,” said my informant, “he may sell the finest brace of his basket, which he has held back to get a better price for, at 6_d._ a-piece, rather than keep them over-night, and that to a woman of the town, whom he may have met reeling home with money in her purse. Thus the products of an honourable gentleman’s skilful industry, on which he greatly prided himself, are eaten by the woman and her ‘fancy man,’ grumblingly enough, for they pronounce the birds inferior to tripe.”

The best quarters for the street-sale of game and poultry are, I am informed from several sources, either the business parts of the metropolis, or else the houses in the several suburbs which are the furthest from a market or from a business part. The squares, crescents, places, and streets, that do not partake of one or the other of these characteristics, are pronounced “no good.”

OF THE EXPERIENCE OF A GAME HAWKER.

The man who gave me the following information was strong and robust, and had a weather-beaten look. He seemed about fifty. He wore when I saw him a large velveteen jacket, a cloth waistcoat which had been once green, and brown corduroy trousers. No part of his attire, though it seemed old, was patched, his shirt being clean and white. He evidently aimed at the gamekeeper style of dress. He affected some humour, and was dogged in his opinions:

“I was a gentleman’s footman when I was a young man,” he said, “and saw life both in town and country; so I knows what things belongs.” [A common phrase among persons of his class to denote their being men of the world.] “I never liked the confinement of service, and besides the upper servants takes on so. The others puts up with it more than they would, I suppose, because they hopes to be butlers themselves in time. The only decent people in the house I lived in last was master and missus. I won 20_l._, and got it too, on the Colonel, when he won the Leger. Master was a bit of a turf gentleman, and so we all dabbled--like master like man, you know, sir. I think that was in 1828, but I’m not certain. We came to London not long after Doncaster” [he meant Doncaster races], “something about a lawsuit, and that winter I left service and bought the goodwill of a coffee-shop for 25_l._ It didn’t answer. I wasn’t up to the coffee-making, I think; there’s a deal of things belongs to all things; so I got out of it, and after that I was in service again, and then I was a boots at an inn. But I couldn’t settle to nothing long; I’m of a free spirit, you see. I was hard up at last, and I popped my watch for a sovereign, because a friend of mine--we sometimes drank together of a night--said he could put me in the pigeon and chicken line; that was what he called it, but it meant game. This just suited me, for I’d been out with the poachers when I was a lad, and indeed when I was in service, out of a night on the sly; so I knew they got stiffish prices. My friend got me the pigeons. I believe he cheated me, but he’s gone to glory. The next season game was made legal eating. Before that I cleared from 25_s._ to 40_s._ a week by selling my ‘pigeons.’ I carried real pigeons as well, which I said was my own rearing at Gravesend. I sold my game pigeons--there was all sorts of names for them--in the City, and sometimes in the Strand, or Charing-cross, or Covent-garden. I sold to shopkeepers. Oft enough I’ve been offered so much tea for a hare. I sometimes had a hare in each pocket, but they was very awkward carriage; if one was sold, the other sagged so. I very seldom sold them, at that time, at less than 3_s._ 6_d._, often 4_s._ 6_d._, and sometimes 5_s._ or more. I once sold a thumping old jack-hare to a draper for 6_s._; it was Christmas time, and he thought it was a beauty. I went into the country after that, among my friends, and had a deal of ups and downs in different parts. I was a navvy part of the time, till five or six year back I came to London again, and got into my old trade; but it’s quite a different thing now. I hawks grouse, and every thing, quite open. Leadenhall and Newgate is my markets. Six of one and half-a-dozen of t’other. When there’s a great arrival of game, after a game battle” (he would so call a _battue_) “and it’s warm weather, that’s my time of day, for then I can buy cheap. A muggy day, when it’s close and warm, is best of all. I have a tidy bit of connection now in game, and don’t touch poultry when I can get game. Grouse is the first thing I get to sell. They are legal eating on the 12th of August, but as there’s hundreds of braces sold in London that day, and as they’re shot in Scotland and Yorkshire, and other places where there’s moors, in course they’re killed before it’s legal. It’s not often I can get them early in the season; not the first week, but I have had three brace two days before they were legal, and sold them at 5_s._ a brace; they cost me 3_s._ 3_d._, but I was told I was favoured. I got them of a dealer, but that’s a secret. I sold a few young partridges with grouse this year at 1_s._ 6_d._ and 1_s._ 9_d._ a piece, allowing 2_d._ or 3_d._ if a brace was taken. They weren’t legal eating till the 1st of September, but they was shot by grouse shooters, and when I hawked them I called them quails. Lord, sir, gentlefolks--and I serve a good many, leastways their cooks, and now and then themselves--_they_ don’t make a fuss about Game Laws; they’ve too much sense. I’ve bought grouse quite fresh and fine when there’s been a lot, and bad keeping weather, at 1_s._ and 15_d._ each. I’ve sold them sometimes at 1_s._ 6_d._ and 2_s._ each, and 2_s._ 6_d._ the big ones, but only twice or thrice. If you ask very low at first, people won’t buy, only a few good judges, ’cause they think something must be amiss. I once bought a dozen good hares, on a Saturday afternoon, for 10_s._ 6_d._ It was jolly hot, and I could hardly sell them. I got 1_s._ 6_d._ a piece for three of them; 2_s._ for the finest one; 1_s._ 3_d._ for five, no, for four; 1_s._ 10_d._ for two; and I had a deal of trouble to get a landlord to take the last two for 1_s._ 6_d._, to wipe off a bit of a drink score. I didn’t do so bad as it was, but if it hadn’t been Saturday, I should have made a good thing of ’em. It’s very hard work carrying a dozen hares; and every one of that lot--except two, and _they_ was fine leverets--was as cheap as butcher’s meat at half-a-crown a piece. I’ve done middling in partridges this year. I’ve bought them, but mixed things they was, as low as from 10_d._ to 16_d._ a brace, and have made a profit, big or little as happened, on every one. People that’s regular customers I always charge 6_d._ profit in 2_s._ 6_d._ to, and that’s far cheaper than they can get served other ways. It’s chiefly the game battles that does so much to cheapen partridges or peasants” (so he always called pheasants); “and it’s only then I meddles with peasants. They’re sold handier than the other birds at the shops, I think. They’re legal eating on the 1st of October. Such nonsense! why isn’t mutton made legal eating, only just at times, as well? In very hard weather I’ve done well on wild ducks. They come over here when the weather’s a clipper, for you see cold weather suits some birds and kills others. It aint hard weather that’s driven them here; the frost has drawed them here, because it’s only then they’re cheap. I’ve bought beauties at 1_s._ a piece, and one day I cleared 10_s._ 6_d._ out of twelve brace of them. I’ve often cleared 6_s._ and 7_s._--at least as often as there’s been a chance. I knew a man that did uncommon well on them; and he once told a parson, or a journeyman parson, I don’t know what he was, that if ever _he_ prayed it was for a hard winter and lots of wild ducks. I’ve done a little sometimes in plover, and woodcock, and snipe, but not so much. I never plays no tricks with _my_ birds. I trims them up to look well, certainly. If they won’t keep, and won’t sell, I sticks them into a landlord I knows, as likes them high, for a quartern or a pot, or anything. It’s often impossible to keep them. If they’re hard hit it’s soon up with them. A sportsman, if he has a good dog--but you’ll know that if you’ve ever been a shooting, sir--may get close upon a covey of young partridges before he springs them, and then give them his one, two, with both barrels, and they’re riddled to bits. I may make 18_s._ a week all the year round, because I have a connection. I’m very much respected, I thinks, on my round, for I deal fair; that there, sir, breeds respect, you know. When I can’t get game (birds) I can sometimes, indeed often, get hares, and mostly rabbits. I’ve hawked venson, but did no good--though I cried it at 4_d._ the lb. My best weeks is worth 30_s._ to 35_s._, my worst is 6_s._ to 10_s._ I’m a good deal in the country, working it. I’m forced to sell fish sometimes. Geese I sometimes join a mate in selling. I don’t mix much with the costermongers; in coorse I knows some. I live middling. Do I ever eat my own game if it’s high? No, sir, never. I couldn’t stand such cag-mag--my stomach couldn’t--though I’ve been a gentleman’s servant. Such stuff don’t suit nobody but rich people, whose stomach’s diseased by over-feeding, and that’s been brought up to it, like. I’ve only myself to keep now. I’ve had a wife or two, but we parted” (this was said gravely enough); “there was nothing to hinder us. I see them sometimes and treat them.”

The quantity of game annually sold in the London streets is as follows:--

Grouse 5,000 Partridges 20,000 Pheasants 12,000 Snipes 5,000 Hares 20,000

STATEMENT OF TWO POULTRY HAWKERS.

Two brothers, both good-looking and well-spoken young men--one I might characterise as handsome--gave me the following account. I found them unwilling to speak of their youth, and did not press them. I was afterwards informed that their parents died within the same month, and that the family was taken into the workhouse; but the two boys left it in a little time, and before they could benefit by any schooling. Neither of them could read or write. They left, I believe, with some little sum in hand, to “start theirselves.” An intelligent costermonger, who was with me when I saw the two brothers, told me that “a costermonger would rather be thought to have come out of prison than out of a workhouse,” for his “mates” would say, if they heard he had been locked up, “O, he’s only been quodded for pitching into a crusher.” The two brothers wore clean smock country frocks over their dress, and made a liberal display of their clean, but coarse, shirts. It was on a Monday that I saw them. What one brother said, the other confirmed: so I use the plural “we.”

“We sell poultry and game, but stick most to poultry, which suits our connection best. We buy at Leadenhall. We’re never cheated in the things we buy; indeed, perhaps, we could’nt be. A salesman will say--Mr. H---- will--‘Buy, if you like, I can’t recommend them. Use your own judgment. They’re cheap.’ He has only one price, and that’s often a low one. We give from 1_s._ to 1_s._ 9_d._ for good chickens, and from 2_s._ 6_d._ mostly for geese and turkeys. Pigeons is 1_s._ 9_d._ to 3_s._ a dozen. We aim at 6_d._ profit on chickens; and 1_s._, if we can get it, or 6_d._ if we can do no better, on geese and turkeys. Ducks are the same as chickens. All the year through, we may make 12_s._ a week a piece. We work together, one on one side of the street and the other on the other. It answers best that way. People find we can’t undersell one another. We buy the poultry, whenever we can, undressed, and dress them ourselves; pull the feathers off and make them ready for cooking. We sell cheaper than the shops, or we couldn’t sell at all. But you must be known, to do any trade, or people will think your poultry’s bad. We work game as well, but mostly poultry. We’ve been on hares to-day, mostly, and have made about 2_s._ 6_d._ a piece, but that’s an extra day. Our best customers are tradesmen in a big way, and people in the houses a little way out of town. Working people don’t buy of us now. We’re going to a penny gaff to-night” (it was then between four and five); “we’ve no better way of spending our time when our day’s work is done.”

From the returns before given, the street-sale of poultry amounts yearly to

500,000 fowls. 80,000 ducks. 20,000 geese. 30,000 turkeys.

OF THE STREET SALE OF LIVE POULTRY.