Part 38
In wet weather, 6 dozen turfs weigh, on an average, 1 cwt.; in dry weather, 8 dozen weigh no more; if, therefore, we take 7 dozen as the usual hundred-weight, a turf-cutter of the best class carries, in basket-loads, to his barrow, and when his stock is completed, drags into town from the localities I have specified, upwards of 3-1/2 cwt. every Friday, nearly 2-1/2 every Tuesday, and about 7 cwt. in the course of a week; the smaller traders drag half the quantity,--and the total weight of turf disposed of for the cage-birds of London, every year, is 546 tons.
Of the supply of turf, obtained as I have described, at least three-fourths is sold to the bird-shops, who retail it to their customers. The price paid by these shopkeepers to the labourers for their turf trade is 2_d._ and 2-1/2_d._ a dozen, but rarely 2-1/2_d._ They retail it at from 3_d._ to 6_d._ a dozen, according to connection and locality. The remainder is sold by the cutters on their rounds from house to house, at two and three a penny.
None of the turf-cutters confine themselves to it. They sell in addition groundsel, chickweed, plaintain, very generally; and a few supply nettles, dandelion, ground-ivy, snails, worms, frogs, and toads. The sellers of groundsel and chickweed are far more numerous, as I have shown, than the turf-cutters--indeed many of them are incapable of cutting turf or of dragging the weight of the turfs.
OF THE EXPERIENCE AND CUSTOMERS OF A TURF-CUTTER.
A short but strongly-built man, of about thirty, with a very English face, and dressed in a smock-frock, wearing also very strong unblacked boots, gave me the following account:--
“My father,” he said, “was in the Earl of ----’s service, and I was brought up to stable-work. I was employed in a large coaching inn, in Lancashire, when I was last employed in that way, but about ten years ago a railway line was opened, and the coaching was no go any longer; it hadn’t a chance to pay, so the horses and all was sold, and I was discharged with a lot of others. I walked from Manchester to London--for I think most men when they don’t know what in the world to do, come to London--and I lived a few months on what little money I had, and what I could pick up in an odd job about horses. I had some expectations when I came up that I might get something to do through my lord, or some of his people--they all knew me: but my lord was abroad, and his establishment wasn’t in town, and I had to depend entirely on myself. I was beat out three or four times, and didn’t know what to do, but somehow or other I got over it. At last--it’s between eight and nine years ago--I was fairly beat out. I was taking a walk--I can’t say just now in what way I went, for it was all one which way--but I remember I saw a man cutting turf, and I remembered then that a man that lived near me lived pretty middling by turf-cutting. So I watched how it was done, and then I inquired how I could get into it, and as I’d paid my way I could give reference to show I might be trusted; so I got a barrow on hire, and a basket, and bought a knife for 3_d._ at a marine-shop, and set to work. At first I only supplied shops, but in a little time I fell into a private round, and that pays better. I’ve been at it almost every day, I may say, ever since. My best customers are working people that’s fond of birds; they’re far the best. It’s the ready penny with them, and no grumbling. I’ve lost money by trusting noblemen; of course I blame their servants. You’d be surprised, sir, to hear how often at rich folks’ houses, when they’ve taken their turf or what they want, they’ll take credit and say, ‘O, I’ve got no change,’ or ‘I can’t be bothered with ha’pence,’ or ‘you must call again.’ There’s one great house in Cavendish-square always takes a month’s credit, and pays one month within another (pays the first month as the second is falling due), and not always that very regular. They can’t know how poor men has to fight for a bit of bread. Some people are very particular about their turfs, and look very sharp for the small clover leaves. We never have turfs left on hand: in summer we water them to keep them fresh; in wet weather they don’t require it; they’ll keep without. I think I make on turf 9_s._ a week all the year round; the summer’s half as good again as the winter. Supposing I make 3_s._ a week on groundsel, and chickweed, and snails, and other things, that’s 12_s._--but look you here, sir. I pay 3_s._ 6_d._ a week for my rent--it’s a furnished room--and 1_s._ 6_d._ a week for my barrow; that’s 5_s._ off the 12_s._; and I’ve a wife and one little boy. My wife may get a day at least every week at charring; she has 1_s._ for it and her board. She helps me when she’s not out, and if she is out, I sometimes have to hire a lad, so it’s no great advantage the shilling a day. I’ve paid 1_s._ 6_d._ a week for my barrow--it’s a very good and big one--for four years. Before that I paid 2_s._ a week. O yes, sir, I know very well, that at 1_s._ 6_d._ a week I’ve paid nearly 14_l._ for a barrow worth only 2_l._ 2_s._; but I can’t help it; I really can’t. I’ve tried my hardest to get money to have one of my own, and to get a few sticks (furniture) of my own too. It’s no use trying any more. If I have ever got a few shillings a-head, there’s a pair of shoes wanted, or there’s something else, or my wife has a fit of sickness, or my little boy has, or something’s sure to happen that way, and it all goes. Last winter was a very hard time for people in my way, from hoar frost and fogs. I ran near 3_l._ into debt; greater part of it for house-rent and my barrow; the rest was small sums borrowed of shopkeepers that I served. I paid all up in the summer, but I’m now 14_s._ in debt for my barrow; it always keeps me back; the man that owns it calls every Sunday morning, but he don’t press me, if I haven’t money. I would get out of the life if I could, but will anybody take a groom out of the streets? and I’m not master of anything but grooming. I can read and write. I was brought up a Roman Catholic, and was christened one. I never go to mass now. One gets out of the way of such things, having to fight for a living as I have. It seems like mocking going to chapel, when you’re grumbling in your soul.”
OF PLANTAIN-SELLERS.
Plantain is sold extensively, and is given to canaries, but water-cress is given to those birds more than any other green thing. It is the ripe seed, in a spike, of the “great” and the “ribbed” plantain. The green leaves of the last-mentioned plant used to be in demand as a styptick. Shenstone speaks of “plantain ribbed, that heals the reaper’s wound.” I believe that it was never sold in the streets of London. The most of the plantain is gathered in the brick-fields, wherever they are found, as the greater plantain, which gives three-fourths of the supply, loves an arid situation. It is sold in hands to the shops, about 60 “heads” going to a “hand,” at a price, according to size, &c., from 1_d._ to 4_d._ On a private round, five or six are given for a halfpenny. It is, however, generally gathered and sold with chickweed, and along with chickweed I have shown the quantity used.
* * * * *
The money-value of the several kinds and quantities of “green-stuff” annually purchased in the streets of London is as follows:--
6,696,450 bunches of water-cresses, at 1/2_d._ per bunch £13,950 5,616,000 „ groundsel, at 1/2_d._ 11,700 1,120,800 „ chickweed and plantain 2,335 660,000 turfs, at 2-1/2_d._ per doz. 572 ------- 28,557
Of the above amount, it may be said that upwards of 14,000_l._ are spent yearly on what may be called the bird-food of London.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF EATABLES AND DRINKABLES.
These dealers were more numerous, even when the metropolitan population was but half its present extent. I heard several causes assigned for this,--such as the higher rate of earnings of the labouring people at that time, as well as the smaller number of shopkeepers who deal in such cheap luxuries as penny pies, and the fewer places of cheap amusement, such as the “penny gaffs.” These places, I was told, “run away with the young people’s pennies,” which were, at one period, expended in the streets.
The class engaged in the manufacture, or in the sale, of these articles, are a more intelligent people than the generality of street-sellers. They have nearly all been mechanics who, from inability to procure employment at their several crafts--from dislike to an irksome and, perhaps, sedentary confinement--or from an overpowering desire “to be their own masters,” have sought a livelihood in the streets. The purchase and sale of fish, fruit, or vegetables require no great training or deftness; but to make the dainties, in which street-people are critical, and to sell them at the lowest possible price, certainly requires some previous discipline to produce the skill to combine and the taste to please.
I may here observe, that I found it common enough among these street-sellers to describe themselves and their fraternity not by their names or callings, but by the article in which they deal. This is sometimes ludicrous enough: “Is the man you’re asking about a pickled whelk, sir?” was said to me. In answer to another inquiry, I was told, “Oh, yes, I know him--he’s a sweet-stuff.” Such ellipses, or abbreviations, are common in all mechanical or commercial callings.
Men and women, and most especially boys, purchase their meals day after day in the streets. The coffee-stall supplies a warm breakfast; shell-fish of many kinds tempt to a luncheon; hot-eels or pea-soup, flanked by a potato “all hot,” serve for a dinner; and cakes and tarts, or nuts and oranges, with many varieties of pastry, confectionary, and fruit, woo to indulgence in a dessert; while for supper there is a sandwich, a meat pudding, or a “trotter.”
The street provisions consist of cooked or prepared victuals, which may be divided into solids, pastry, confectionary, and drinkables.
The “solids” however, of these three divisions, are such as only regular street-buyers consider to be sufficing for a substantial meal, for it will be seen that the comestibles accounted “good for dinner,” are all of a _dainty_, rather than a solid character. Men whose lives, as I have before stated, are alternations of starvation and surfeit, love some easily-swallowed and comfortable food, better than the most approved substantiality of a dinner-table. I was told by a man, who was once foodless for thirty-eight hours, that in looking into the window of a cook-shop--he longed far more for a basin of soup than for a cut from the boiled round, or the roasted ribs, of beef. He felt a gnawing rather than a ravenous desire, and some tasty semi-liquid was the incessant object of his desires.
The solids then, according to street estimation, consist of hot-eels, pickled whelks, oysters, sheep’s-trotters, pea-soup, fried fish, ham-sandwiches, hot green peas, kidney puddings, boiled meat puddings, beef, mutton, kidney, and eel pies, and baked potatos. In each of these provisions the street poor find a mid-day or mid-night meal.
The pastry and confectionary which tempt the street eaters are tarts of rhubarb, currant, gooseberry, cherry, apple, damson, cranberry, and (so called) mince pies; plum dough and plum-cake; lard, currant, almond and many other varieties of cakes, as well as of tarts; gingerbread-nuts and heart-cakes; Chelsea buns; muffins and crumpets; “sweet stuff” includes the several kinds of rocks, sticks, lozenges, candies, and hard-bakes; the medicinal confectionary of cough-drops and horehound; and, lastly, the more novel and aristocratic luxury of street-ices; and strawberry cream, at 1_d._ a glass, (in Greenwich Park).
The drinkables are tea, coffee, and cocoa; ginger-beer, lemonade, Persian sherbet, and some highly-coloured beverages which have no specific name, but are introduced to the public as “cooling” drinks; hot elder cordial or wine; peppermint water; curds and whey; water (as at Hampstead); rice milk; and milk in the parks.
At different periods there have been attempts to introduce more substantial viands into the street provision trade, but all within these twenty years have been exceptional and unsuccessful. One man a few years back established a portable cook-shop in Leather-lane, cutting out portions of the joints to be carried away or eaten on the spot, at the buyer’s option. But the speculation was a failure. Black puddings used to be sold, until a few years back, smoking from cans, not unlike potato cans, in such places as the New Cut; but the trade in these rather suspicious articles gradually disappeared.
Mr. Albert Smith, who is an acute observer in all such matters, says, in a lively article on the Street Boys of London:
“The kerb is his club, offering all the advantages of one of those institutions without any subscription or ballot. Had he a few pence, he might dine equally well as at Blackwall, and with the same variety of delicacies without going twenty yards from the pillars of St. Clement’s churchyard. He might begin with a water _souchée_ of eels, varying his first course with pickled whelks, cold fried flounders, or periwinkles. Whitebait, to be sure, he would find a difficulty in procuring, but as the more cunning gourmands do not believe these delicacies to be fish at all, but merely little bits of light pie-crust fried in grease;--and as moreover, the brown bread and butter is after all the grand attraction,--the boy might soon find a substitute. Then would come the potatos, apparently giving out so much steam that the can which contains them seems in momentary danger of blowing up; large, hot, mealy fellows, that prove how unfounded were the alarms of the bad-crop-ites; and he might next have a course of boiled feet of some animal or other, which he would be certain to find in front of the gin-shop. Cyder-cups perhaps he would not get; but there would be ‘ginger-beer from the fountain, at 1_d._ per glass;’ and instead of mulled claret, he could indulge in hot elder cordial; whilst for dessert he could calculate upon all the delicacies of the season, from the salads at the corner of Wych-street to the baked apples at Temple Bar. None of these things would cost more than a penny a piece; some of them would be under that sum; and since as at Verey’s, and some other foreign restaurateurs, there is no objection to your dividing the “portions,” the boy might, if he felt inclined to give a dinner to a friend, get off under 6_d._ There would be the digestive advantage too of moving leisurely about from one course to another; and, above all, there would be no fee to waiters.” After alluding to the former glories of some of the street-stands, more especially of the kidney pudding establishments which displayed rude transparencies, one representing the courier of St. Petersburg riding six horses at once for a kidney pudding, Mr. Smith continues,--“But of all these eating-stands the chief favourite with the boy is the potato-can. They collect around it as they would do on ’Change, and there talk over local matters, or discuss the affairs of the adjacent cab-stand, in which they are at times joined by the waterman whom they respect, more so perhaps than the policeman; certainly more than they do the street-keeper, for him they especially delight to annoy, and they watch any of their fellows eating a potato, with a curiosity and an attention most remarkable, as if no two persons fed in the same manner, and they expected something strange or diverting to happen at every mouthful.”
A gentleman, who has taken an artist’s interest in all connected with the streets, and has been familiar with their daily and nightly aspect from the commencement of the present century, considers that the great change is not so much in what has ceased to be sold, but in the introduction of fresh articles into street-traffic--such as pine-apples and Brazil-nuts, rhubarb and cucumbers, ham-sandwiches, ginger-beer, &c. The coffee-stall, he represents, has but superseded the saloop-stall (of which I have previously spoken); while the class of street-customers who supported the saloop-dealer now support the purveyor of coffee. The _appearance_ of the two stalls, however, seen before daybreak, with their respective customers, on a bleak winter’s morning, was very different. Round the saloop-stall was a group--hardly discernible at a little distance in the dimly-lighted streets--the prominent figures being of two callings now extinct--the climbing-boy and the old hackney-coachman.
The little sweep _would_ have his saloop smoking hot--and there was the common appliance of a charcoal grate--regaling himself with the savoury steam until the mess was cool enough for him to swallow; whilst he sought to relieve his naked feet from the numbing effects of the cold by standing now on the right foot and now on the left, and swinging the other to and fro, until a change of posture was necessitated; his white teeth the while gleamed from his sooty visage as he gleefully licked his lips at the warm and oily breakfast.
The old hackney-coachman was wrapped up in a many-caped great coat, drab--when it left the tailor’s hands some years before--but then worn and discoloured, and, perhaps, patched or tattered; its weight alone, however, communicated a sort of warmth to the wearer; his legs were closely and artistically “wisped” with hay-bands; and as he kept smiting his chest with his arms, “to keep the cold out,” while his saloop was cooling, he would, in no very gentle terms, express his desire to add to its comforting influence the stimulant of a “flash of lightning,” a “go of rum,” or a “glass of max,”--for so a dram of neat spirit was then called.
The old watchman of that day, too, almost as heavily coated as the hackneyman, would sometimes partake of the street “Saloop-loop-loop! _Sa_-loop!” The woman of the town, in “looped and windowed raggedness,” the outcast of the very lowest class, was at the saloop, as she is now and then at the coffee-stall, waiting until daylight drove her to her filthy lodging-house. But the climbing-boy has, happily, left no successor; the hackneyman has been succeeded by the jauntier cabman; and the taciturn old watchman by the lounging and trim policeman.
Another class of street-sellers, no longer to be seen, were the “barrow-women.” They sold fruit of all kinds, little else, in very clean white barrows, and their fruit was excellent, and purchased by the wealthier classes. They were, for the most part, Irish women, and some were remarkable for beauty. Their dress was usually a good chintz gown, the skirt being tidily tucked or pinned up behind, “in a way,” said one informant, “now sometimes seen on the stage when correctness of costume is cared for.” These women were prosperous in their calling, nor was there any imputation on their chastity, as the mothers were almost always wives.
Concerning the bygone street-cries, I had also the following account from the personal observation of an able correspondent:--
“First among the old ‘musical cries,’ may be cited the ‘Tiddy Doll!’--immortalised by Hogarth--then comes the last person, who, with a fine bass voice, coaxed his customers to buy _sweets_ with, ‘Quack, quack, quack, quack! Browns, browns, browns! have you got any mouldy browns?’ There was a man, too, who sold tripe, &c., in this way, and to some purpose; he was as fine a man as ever stepped, and his deep rich voice would ring through a whole street, ‘Dog’s-meat! cat’s-meat! nice tripe! neat’s feet! Come buy my trotters!’ The last part would not have disgraced Lablache. He discovered a new way of pickling tripe--got on--made contracts for supplying the Navy during the war, and acquired a large property. One of our most successful artists is his grandson. Then there was that delight of our childhood--the eight o’clock ‘Hot spiced gingerbread! hot spiced gingerbread! buy my spiced gingerbread! sm-o-o-king hot!’” Another informant remembered a very popular character (among the boys), whose daily cry was: “Hot spiced gingerbread nuts, nuts, nuts! If _one_’ll warm you, _wha-at_’ll a pound do?--_Wha-a-a-at_’ll a pound do?” Gingerbread was formerly in much greater demand than it is now.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF PEA-SOUP AND HOT EELS.