Part 41

“I’ve been in the trade,” he said, “seventeen years. Before that, I was a gentleman’s servant, and I married a servant-maid, and we had a family, and, on that account, couldn’t, either of us, get a situation, though we’d good characters. I was out of employ for seven or eight months, and things was beginning to go to the pawn for a living; but at last, when I gave up any hope of getting into a gentleman’s service, I raised 10_s._, and determined to try something else. I was persuaded, by a friend who kept a beer-shop, to sell oysters at his door. I took his advice, and went to Billingsgate for the first time in my life, and bought a peck of oysters for 2_s._ 6_d._ I was dressed respectable then--nothing like the mess and dirt I’m in now” [I may observe, that there was no dirt about him]; “and so the salesman laid it on, but I gave him all he asked. I know a deal better now. I’d never been used to open oysters, and I couldn’t do it. I cut my fingers with the knife slipping all over them, and had to hire a man to open for me, or the blood from my cut fingers would have run upon the oysters. For all that, I cleared 2_s._ 6_d._ on that peck, and I soon got up to the trade, and did well; till, in two or three months, the season got over, and I was advised, by the same friend, to try fried fish. That suited me. I’ve lived in good families, where there was first-rate men-cooks, and I know what good cooking means. I bought a dozen plaice; I forget what I gave for them, but they were dearer then than now. For all that, I took between 11_s._ and 12_s._ the first night--it was Saturday--that I started; and I stuck to it, and took from 7_s._ to 10_s._ every night, with more, of course, on Saturday, and it was half of it profit then. I cleared a good mechanic’s earnings at that time--30_s._ a week and more. Soon after, I was told that, if agreeable, my wife could have a stall with fried fish, opposite a wine-vaults just opened, and she made nearly half as much as I did on my rounds. I served the public-houses, and soon got known. With some landlords I had the privilege of the parlour, and tap-room, and bar, when other tradesmen have been kept out. The landlords will say to me still: ‘_You_ can go in, Fishy.’ Somehow, I got the name of ‘Fishy’ then, and I’ve kept it ever since. There was hospitality in those days. I’ve gone into a room in a public-house, used by mechanics, and one of them has said: ‘I’ll stand fish round, gentlemen;’ and I’ve supplied fifteen penn’orths. Perhaps he was a stranger, such a sort of customer, that wanted to be agreeable. Now, it’s more likely I hear: ‘Jack, lend us a penny to buy a bit of fried;’ and then Jack says: ‘You be d--d! here, lass, let’s have another pint.’ The insults and difficulties I’ve had in the public-house trade is dreadful. I once sold 16_d._ worth to three rough-looking fellows I’d never seen before, and they seemed hearty, and asked me to drink with them, so I took a pull; but they wouldn’t pay me when I asked, and I waited a goodish bit before I did ask. I thought, at first, it was their fun, but I waited from four to seven, and I found it was no fun. I felt upset, and ran out and told the policeman, but he said it was only a debt, and he couldn’t interfere. So I ran to the station, but the head man there said the same, and told me I should hand over the fish with one hand, and hold out the other hand for my money. So I went back to the public-house, and asked for my money--and there was some mechanics that knew me there then--but I got nothing but ‘---- you’s!’ and one of ’em used most dreadful language. At last, one of the mechanics said: ‘Muzzle him, Fishy, if he won’t pay.’ He was far bigger than me, him that was one in debt; but my spirit was up, and I let go at him and gave him a bloody nose, and the next hit I knocked him backwards, I’m sure I don’t know how, on to a table; but I fell on him, and he clutched me by the coat-collar--I was respectable dressed then--and half smothered me. He tore the back of my coat, too, and I went home like Jim Crow. The pot-man and the others parted us, and they made the man give me 1_s._, and the waiter paid me the other 4_d._, and said he’d take his chance to get it--but he never got it. Another time I went into a bar, and there was a ball in the house, and one of the ball gents came down and gave my basket a kick without ever a word, and started the fish; and in a scuffle--he was a little fellow, but my master--I had this finger put out of joint--you can see that, sir, still--and was in the hospital a week from an injury to my leg; the tiblin bone was hurt, the doctors said” [the tibia.] “I’ve had my tray kicked over for a lark in a public-house, and a scramble for my fish, and all gone, and no help and no money for me. The landlords always prevent such things, when they can, and interfere for a poor man; but then it’s done sudden, and over in an instant. That sort of thing wasn’t the worst. I once had some powdery stuff flung sudden over me at a parlour door. My fish fell off, for I jumped, because I felt blinded, and what became of them I don’t know; but I aimed at once for home--it was very late--and had to feel my way almost like a blind man. I can’t tell what I suffered. I found it was something black, for I kept rubbing my face with my apron, and could just tell it came away black. I let myself in with my latch, and my wife was in bed, and I told her to get up and look at my face and get some water, and she thought I was joking, as she was half asleep; but when she got up and got a light, and a glass, she screamed, and said I looked such a shiny image; and so I did, as well as I could see, for it was black lead--such as they use for grates--that was flung on me. I washed it off, but it wasn’t easy, and my face was sore days after. I had a respectable coat on then, too, which was greatly spoiled, and no remedy at all. I don’t know who did it to me. I heard some one say: ‘You’re served out beautiful.’ Its men that calls themselves gentlemen that does such things. I know the style of them then--it was eight or ten years ago; they’d heard of Lord ----, and his goings on. That way it’s better now, but worse, far, in the way of getting a living. I dare say, if I had dressed in rough corderoys, I shouldn’t have been larked at so much, because they might have thought I was a regular coster, and a fighter; but I don’t like that sort of thing--I like to be decent and respectable, if I can.

“I’ve been in the ‘fried’ trade ever since, except about three months that I tried the sandwiches. I didn’t do so well in them, but it was a far easier trade; no carrying heavy weights all the way from Billingsgate: but I went back to the fried. Why now, sir, a good week with me--and I’ve only myself in the trade now” [he was a widower]--“is to earn 12_s._, a poor week is 9_s._; and there’s as many of one as of the other. I’m known to sell the best of fish, and to cook it in the best style. I think half of us, take it round and round for a year, may earn as much as I do, and the other half about half as much. I think so. I might have saved money, but for a family. I’ve only one at home with me now, and he really _is_ a good lad. My customers are public-house people that want a relish or a sort of supper with their beer, not so much to drinkers. I sell to tradesmen, too; 4_d._ worth for tea or supper. Some of them send to my place, for I’m known. The Great Exhibition can’t be any difference to me. I’ve a regular round. I used to sell a good deal to women of the town, but I don’t now. They haven’t the money, I believe. Where I took 10_s._ of them, eight or ten years ago, I now take only 6_d._ They may go for other sorts of relishes now; I can’t say. The worst of my trade is, that people must have as big penn’orths when fish is dear as when its cheap. I never sold a piece of fish to an Italian boy in my life, though they’re Catholics. Indeed, I never saw an Italian boy spend a halfpenny in the streets on anything.”

A working-man told me that he often bought fried fish, and accounted it a good to men like himself. He was fond of fried fish to his supper; he couldn’t buy half so cheap as the street-sellers, perhaps not a quarter; and, if he could, it would cost him 1_d._ for dripping to fry the fish in, and he got it ready, and well fried, and generally good, for 1_d._

Subsequent inquiries satisfied me that my informant was correct as to his calculations of his fellows’ earnings, judging from his own. The price of plaice at Billingsgate is from 1/2_d._ to 2_d._ each, according to size (the fried fish purveyors never calculate by the weight), 3/4_d._ being a fair average. A plaice costing 1_d._ will now be fried into four pieces, each 1_d._; but the addition of bread, cost of oil, &c., reduces the “fried” peoples’ profits to rather less than cent. per cent. Soles and the other fish are, moreover, 30 per cent. dearer than plaice. As 150 sellers make as much weekly as my informant, and the other 150 half that amount, we have an average yearly earning of 27_l._ 6_s._ in one case, and of 13_l._ 13_s._ in the other. Taking only 20_l._ a year as a medium earning, and adding 90 per cent. for profit, the outlay on the fried fish supplied by London street-sellers is 11,400_l._

OF THE PREPARATION AND QUANTITY OF SHEEP’S TROTTERS, AND OF THE STREET-SELLERS.

The sale of sheep’s trotters, as a regular street-trade, is confined to London, Liverpool, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and a few more of our greater towns. The “trotter,” as it is commonly called, is the boiled foot of the sheep. None of my readers can have formed any commensurate notion of the extent of the sale in London, and to some readers the very existence of such a comestible may be unknown. The great supply now required is readily attained. The wholesale trade is now in the hands of one fellmongering firm, though until within these twenty months or so there were two, and the feet are cut off the sheep-skins by the salesmen in the skin-market, in Bermondsey, and conveyed to the fellmonger’s premises in carts and in trucks.

Sheep’s trotters, one of my informants could remember, were sold in the streets fifty years ago, but in such small quantities that it could hardly be called a trade. Instead of being prepared wholesale as at present, and then sold out to the retailers, the trotters were then prepared by the individual retailers, or by small traders in tripe and cow-heel. Twenty-five years ago nearly all the sheep’s trotters were “lined and prepared,” when the skin came into the hands of the fellmonger, for the glue and size makers. Twenty years ago only about one-twentieth of the trotters now prepared for eating were devoted to the same purpose; and it was not until about fifteen years back that the trade began to reach its present magnitude; and for the last twelve years it has been about stationary, but there were never more sold than last year.

From fifteen to twenty years ago glue and size, owing principally to improved modes of manufacture, became cheaper, so that it paid the fellmonger better to dispose of the trotters as an article “cooked” for the poor, than to the glue-boiler.

The process of cookery is carried on rapidly at the fellmonger’s in question. The feet are first scalded for about half an hour. After that from ten to fifteen boys are employed in scooping out the hoofs, which are sold for manure or to manufacturers of Prussian blue, which is extensively used by painters. Women are then employed, forty being an average number, “to scrape the hair off,”--for hair it is called--quickly, but softly, so that the skin should not be injured, and after that the trotters are boiled for about four hours, and they are then ready for market.

The proprietor of this establishment, after he had obligingly given me the information I required, invited me to walk round his premises unaccompanied, and observe how the business was conducted. The premises are extensive, and are situated, as are nearly all branches of the great trade connected with hides and skins, in Bermondsey. The trotter business is kept distinct from the general fellmongering. Within a long shed are five coppers, each containing, on an average, 250 “sets,” a set being the complement of the sheep’s feet, four. Two of these coppers, on my visit, were devoted to the scalding, and three to the boiling of the trotters. They looked like what one might imagine to be witches’ big caldrons; seething, hissing, boiling, and throwing forth a steam not peculiarly grateful to the nostrils of the uninitiated. Thus there are, weekly, “cooking” in one form or other, the feet of 20,000 sheep for the consumption of the poorer classes, or as a relish for those whose stomachs crave after edibles of this description. At one extremity of this shed are the boys, who work in a place open at the side, but the flues and fires make all parts sufficiently warm. The women have a place to themselves on the opposite side of the yard. The room where they work has forms running along its sides, and each woman has a sort of bench in front of her seat, on which she scrapes the trotters. One of the best of these workwomen can scrape 150 sets, or 600 feet in a day, but the average of the work is 500 sets a week, including women and girls. I saw no girls but what seemed above seventeen or eighteen, and none of the women were old. They were exceedingly merry, laughing and chatting, and appearing to consider that a listener was not of primary consequence, as they talked pretty much altogether. I saw none but what were decently dressed, some were good-looking, and none seemed sickly.

In this establishment are prepared, weekly, 20,000 sets, or 80,000 feet; a yearly average of 4,160,000 trotters, or the feet of 1,040,000 sheep. Of this quantity the street-folk buy seven-eighths; 3,640,000 trotters yearly, or 70,000 weekly. The number of sheep trotter-sellers may be taken at 300, which gives an average of nearly sixty sets a week per individual.

The wholesale price, at the “trotter yard,” is five a penny, which gives an outlay by the street-sellers of 3,033_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._ yearly.

But this is not the whole of the trade. Lamb’s trotters are also prepared, but only to one-twentieth of the quantity of sheep’s trotters, and that for only three months of the year. These are all sold to the street-sellers. The lamb’s foot is usually left appended to the leg and shoulder of lamb. It is weighed with the joint, but the butcher’s man or boy will say to the purchaser: “Do you want the foot?” As the answer is usually in the negative, it is at once cut off and forms a “perquisite.” There are some half dozen men, journeymen butchers not fully employed, who collect these feet, prepare and sell them to the street-people, but as the lamb’s feet are very seldom as fresh as those of the sheep carried direct from the skin market to--so to speak--the great trotter kitchen, the demand for “lamb’s” falls off yearly. Last year the sale may be taken at about 14,000 sets, selling, wholesale, at about 46_l._, the same price as the sheep.

The sellers of trotters, who are stationary at publichouse and theatre doors, and at street corners, and itinerant, but itinerant chiefly from one public house to another are a wretchedly poor class. Three fourths of them are elderly women and children, the great majority being Irish people, and there are more boys than girls in the trade. The capital required to start in the business is very small. A hand basket of the larger size costs 1_s._ 9_d._, but smaller or second-hand only 1_s._, and the white cotton cloth on which the trotters are displayed costs 4_d._ or 6_d._; stock-money need not exceed 1_s._, so that 3_s._ is all that is required. This is one reason, I heard from several trotter-sellers, why the business is over-peopled.

STATEMENTS OF SHEEP’S TROTTER WOMEN.

From one woman, who, I am assured, may be taken as a fair type of the better class of trotter-sellers--some of the women being sottish and addicted to penn’orths of gin beyond their means--I had the following statement. I found her in the top room of a lofty house in Clerkenwell. She was washing when I called, and her son, a crippled boy of 16, with his crutch by his side, was cleaning knives, which he had done for many months for a family in the neighbourhood, who paid for his labour in what the mother pronounced better than money--broken victuals, because they were of such good, wholesome quality. The room, which is of a good size, had its red-brown plaster walls, stained in parts with damp, but a great portion was covered with the cheap engravings “given away with No. 6” (or any other number) of some periodical “of thrilling interest;” while the narrow mantel-shelf was almost covered with pot figures of dumpy men, red-breeched and blue-coated, and similar ornaments. I have often noted such attempts to subdue, as it were, the grimness of poverty, by the poor who had “seen better days.” The mother was tall and spare, and the boy had that look of premature sedateness, his face being of a sickly hue, common to those of quiet dispositions, who have been afflicted from their childhood:--

“I’m the widow of a sawyer, sir,” said Mrs. ----, with a very slight brogue, for she was an Irishwoman, “and I’ve been a widow 18 long years. I’m 54, I believe, but that 18 years seems longer than all the rest of my life together. My husband earned hardly ever less than 30_s._ a week, sometimes 3_l._, and I didn’t know what pinching was. But I was left destitute with four young children, and had to bring them up as well as I could, by what I could make by washing and charing, and a hard fight it was. One of my children went for a soldier, one’s dead, another’s married, and that’s the youngest there. Ah! poor fellow, what he’s gone through! He’s had 18 abscesses, one after another, and he has been four times in Bartholomew’s. There’s only God above to help him when I’m gone. My health broke six years ago, and I couldn’t do hard work in washing, and I took to trotter selling, because one of my neighbours was in that way, and told me how to go about it. My son sells trotters too; he always sits at the corner of this street. I go from one public-house to another, and sometimes stand at the door, or sit inside, because I’m known and have leave. But I can’t either sit, or stand, or walk long at a time, I’m so rheumatic. No, sir, I can’t say I was ever badly insulted in a public-house; but I only go to those I know. Others may be different. We depend mostly on trotters, but I have a shilling and my meat, for charing, a day in every week. I’ve tried ’winks and whelks too, ’cause I thought they might be more in my pocket than trotters, but they don’t suit a poor woman that’s begun a street-trade when she’s not very young. And the trotters can be carried on with so little money. It’s not so long ago that I’ve sold three-penn’orth of trotters--that is, him and me has--pretty early in the evening; I’d bought them at Mr. ----’s, in Bermondsey, in the afternoon, for we can buy three penn’orth, and I walked there again--perhaps it’s four miles there and back--and bought another 3_d._ worth. The first three-pence was all I could rise. It’s a long weary way for me to walk, but some walk from Poplar and Limehouse. If I lay out 2_s._ on the Saturday--there’s 15 sets for 1_s._, that’s 60 trotters--they’ll carry us on to Monday night, and sometimes, if they’ll keep, to Tuesday night. Sometimes I could sell half-a-crown’s worth in less time. I have to go to Bermondsey three or four times a week. The trade was far better six years ago, though trotters were dearer then, only 13 sets 1_s._, then 14, now 15. For some very few, that’s very fine and very big, I get a penny a piece; for some I get 1-1/2_d._ for two; the most’s 1/2_d._ each; some’s four for 1-1/2_d._; and some I have to throw into the dust-hole. The two of us earns 5_s._ a week on trotters, not more, I’m sure. I sell to people in the public-houses; some of them may be rather the worse for drink, but not so many; regular drunkards buys nothing but drink. I’ve sold them too to steady, respectable gentlemen, that’s been passing in the street, who put them in their pockets for supper. My rent’s 1_s._ a week.”

I then had some conversation with the poor lad. He’d had many a bitter night, he told me, from half-past five to twelve, for he knew there was no breakfast for his mother and him if he couldn’t sell some trotters. He had a cry sometimes. He didn’t know any good it did him, but he couldn’t help it. The boys gathered round him sometimes, and teased him, and snatched at his crutch; and the policeman said that he must make him “move on,” as he encouraged the boys about him. He didn’t like the boys any more than they were fond of the policemen. He had often sad thoughts as he sat with his trotters before him, when he didn’t cry; he wondered if ever he would be better off; but what could he do? He could read, but not write; he liked to read very well when he had anything to read. His mother and he never missed mass.

Another old woman, very poorly, but rather tidily dressed, gave me the following account, which shows a little of public-house custom:--