Part 47
Perhaps the only thing which can be called a cordial or a liqueur sold in the streets (if we except elder wine), is peppermint-water, and of this the sale is very limited. For the first 15 or 20 years of the present century, I was told by one who spoke from a personal knowledge, “a pepperminter” had two little taps to his keg, which had a division in the interior. From one tap was extracted “peppermint-water;” from the other, “strong peppermint-water.” The one was at that time 1_d._ a glass, the other from 2_d._ to 4_d._, according to the size of the glass. With the “strong” beverage was mixed smuggled spirit, but so strongly impregnated with the odour of the mint, that a passer-by could not detect the presence of the illicit compound. There are six persons selling peppermint-water in the winter, and only half that number in the summer. The trade is irregular, as some pursue it only of a night, and generally in the street markets; others sell at Billingsgate, and places of great traffic, when the traffic is being carried on. They are stationary for awhile, but keep shifting their ground. The vendors generally “distilled their own mint,” when the sale was greater, but within these six or eight years they have purchased it at a distilling chemist’s, and have only prepared it for sale. Water is added to the distilled liquid bought of the chemist, to increase the quantity; but to enhance the heat of the draught--which is a draw to some buyers--black pepper (unground), or ginger, or, but rarely, capsicums, are steeped in the beverage. The peppermint-water is lauded by the vendors, when questioned concerning it, as an excellent stomachic; but nothing is said publicly of its virtues, the cry being merely, “Pep-permint water, a halfpenny a glass.”
The sellers will generally say that they distil the peppermint-water themselves, but this is not now commonly the case. The process, however, is simple enough. The peppermint used is gathered just as it is bursting into flower, and the leaves and buds are placed in a tub, with just water enough to cover them. This steeping continues 24 hours, and then a still is filled three-parts full, and the water is “over” drawn very slowly.
The price at the chemist’s is 1_s._ a quart for the common mint-water; the street price is 1/2_d._ a glass, containing something short of the eighth of a pint. What costs 1_s._, the street-seller disposes of for 2_s._, so realising the usual cent. per cent.
To take 2_s._ is now accounted “a tidy day’s work;” and calculating that four “pepperminters” take that amount the year round, Sundays excepted, we find that nearly 125_l._ is spent annually in peppermint-water and 900 gallons of it consumed every year in the streets of London.
The capital required is, keg, 3_s._ 6_d._, or jar, 2_s._ (for they are used indifferently); four glasses, 1_s._; towel, 4_d._, and stock-money, 4_s._; or, in all, about 8_s._ The “water”-keg, or jar, is carried by the vendor, but sometimes it is rested on a large stool carried for the purpose. A distilling apparatus, such as the street-sellers used, was worth about 10_s._ The vendors are of the same class of street-sellers as the ginger-beer people.
OF MILK SELLING IN ST. JAMES’S PARK.
The principal sale of milk from the cow is in St. James’s Park. The once fashionable drink known as syllabubs--the milk being drawn warm from the cow’s udder, upon a portion of wine, sugar, spice, &c.--is now unknown. As the sellers of milk in the park are merely the servants of cow-keepers, and attend to the sale as a part of their business, no lengthened notice is required.
The milk-sellers obtain leave from the Home Secretary, to ply their trade in the park. There are eight stands in the summer, and as many cows, but in the winter there are only four cows. The milk-vendors sell upon an average, in the summer, from eighteen to twenty quarts per day; in the winter, not more than a third of that quantity. The interrupted milking of the cows, as practised in the Park, often causes them to give less milk, than they would in the ordinary way. The chief customers are infants, and adults, and others, of a delicate constitution, who have been recommended to take new milk. On a wet day scarcely any milk can be disposed of. Soldiers are occasional customers.
A somewhat sour-tempered old woman, speaking as if she had been crossed in love, but experienced in this trade, gave me the following account:
“It’s not at all a lively sort of life, selling milk from the cows, though some thinks it’s a gay time in the Park! I’ve often been dull enough, and could see nothing to interest one, sitting alongside a cow. People drink new milk for their health, and I’ve served a good many such. They’re mostly young women, I think, that’s delicate, and makes the most of it. There’s twenty women, and more, to one man what drinks new milk. If they was set to some good hard work, it would do them more good than new milk, or ass’s milk either, I think. Let them go on a milk-walk to cure them--that’s what I say. Some children come pretty regularly with their nurses to drink new milk. Some bring their own china mugs to drink it out of; nothing less was good enough for them. I’ve seen the nurse-girls frightened to death about the mugs. I’ve heard one young child say to another: ‘I shall tell mama that Caroline spoke to a mechanic, who came and shook hands with her.’ The girl was as red as fire, and said it was her brother. Oh, yes, there’s a deal of brothers comes to look for their sisters in the Park. The greatest fools I’ve sold milk to is servant-gals out for the day. Some must have a day, or half a day, in the month. Their mistresses ought to keep them at home, I say, and not let them out to spend their money, and get into nobody knows what company for a holiday; mistresses is too easy that way. It’s such gals as makes fools of themselves in liking a soldier to run after them. I’ve seen one of them--yes, some would call her pretty, and the prettiest is the silliest and easiest tricked out of money, that’s my opinion, anyhow--I’ve seen one of them, and more than one, walk with a soldier, and they’ve stopped a minute, and she’s taken something out of her glove and given it to him. Then they’ve come up to me, and he’s said to her, ‘Mayn’t I treat you with a little new milk, my dear?’ and he’s changed a shilling. Why, of course, the silly fool of a gal had given him that there shilling. I thought, when Annette Myers shot the soldier, it would be a warning, but nothing’s a warning to some gals. _She_ was one of those fools. It was a good deal talked about at the stand, but I think none of us know’d her. Indeed, we don’t know our customers but by sight. Yes, there’s now and then some oldish gentlemen--I suppose they’re gentlemen, anyhow, they’re idle men--lounging about the stand: but there’s no nonsense there. They tell me, too, that there’s not so much lounging about as there was; those that’s known the trade longer than me thinks so. Them children’s a great check on the nusses, and they can’t be such fools as the servant-maids. I don’t know how many of them I’ve served with milk along with soldiers: I never counted them. They’re nothing to me. Very few elderly people drink new milk. It’s mostly the young. I’ve been asked by strangers when the Duke of Wellington would pass to the Horse-Guards or to the House of Lords. He’s pretty regular. I’ve had 6_d._ given me--but not above once or twice a year--to tell strangers where was the best place to see him from as he passed. I don’t understand about this Great Exhibition, but, no doubt, more new milk will be sold when it’s opened, and that’s all I cares about.”
OF THE STREET SALE OF MILK.
During the summer months milk is sold in Smithfield, Billingsgate, and the other markets, and on Sundays in Battersea-fields, Clapham-common, Camberwell-green, Hampstead-heath, and similar places. About twenty men are engaged in this sale. They usually wear a smock frock, and have the cans and yoke used by the regular milk-sellers; they are not itinerant. The skim milk--for they sell none else--is purchased at the dairies at 1-1/2_d._ a quart, and even the skim milk is also further watered by the street-sellers. Their cry is “Half-penny half-pint! Milk!” The tin measure however in which the milk-and-water is served is generally a “slang,” and contains but half of the quantity proclaimed. The purchasers are chiefly boys and children; rarely men, and never costermongers, I was told, “for they reckon milk sickly.” These street-sellers--who have most of them been employed in the more regular milk-trade--clear about 1_s._ 6_d._ a day each, for three months; and as the profit is rather more than cent. per cent. it appears that about 4,000 gallons of milk are thus sold, and upwards of 260_l._ laid out upon these persons, yearly in its purchase.
A pair of cans with the yoke cost 15_s._, and 1_l._ is amply sufficient as capital to start in this trade, as the two measures used may be bought for 2_s._; and 3_s._ can be devoted to the purchase of the liquid.
OF THE STREET-SALE OF CURDS AND WHEY.
The preparations of milk which comprise the street-trade, are curds and whey and rice-milk, the oldest street-sellers stating that these were a portion of the trade in their childhood. The one is a summer, and the other a winter traffic, and both are exclusively in the hands of the same middle-aged and elderly women. The vendors prepare the curds and whey in all cases themselves. “Skim-milk,” purchased at the dairies, is used by the street-purveyors, a gallon being the quantity usually prepared at a time. This milk gallon is double the usual quantity, or eight quarts. The milk is first “scalded,” the pan containing it being closely watched, in order that the contents may not boil. The scalding occupies 10 or 15 minutes, and it is then “cooled” until it attains the lukewarmness of new milk. Half a pound of sugar is then dissolved in the milk, and a tea-spoonful of rennet is introduced, which is sufficient to “turn” a gallon. In an hour, or in some cases two, the milk is curded, and is ready for use. The street-sale is confined to stalls; the stall, which is the ordinary stand, being covered with a white cloth, or in some cases an oil-cloth, and on this the curds, in a bright tin kettle or pan, are deposited. There are six mugs on the board, and a spoon in each, but those who affect a more modern style have glasses. One of the neatest stalls, as regards the display of glass, and the bright cleanliness of the vessel containing the curds, is in Holborn; but the curd-seller there has only an average business. The mugs or glasses hold about the third of a pint, and “the full of one” is a penny-worth; for a halfpenny-worth the vessel is half filled. The season is during the height of summer, and continues three or four months, or, as one woman tersely and commercially expressed it, “from Easter to fruit.” The number of street-saleswomen is about 100. Along with the curds they generally sell oranges, or such early fruit as cherries.
A woman who had sold “cruds”--as the street-people usually call it--for eighteen years, gave me the following account:--“Boys and girls is my best customers for cruds, sir. Perhaps I sell to them almost half of all I get rid of. Very little fellows will treat girls, often bigger than themselves, at my stall, and they have as much chaffing and nonsense about it’s being ‘stunning good for the teeth,’ and such like, as if they was grown-up. Some don’t much like it at first, but they gets to like it. One boy, whose young woman made faces at it--and it _was_ a little sour to be sure that morning--got quite vexed and said, ‘Wot a image you’re a-making on yourself!’ I don’t know what sort the boys are, only that they’re the street-boys mostly. Quiet working people are my other customers, perhaps rather more women than men. Some has told me they was teetotallers. Then there’s the women of the town of the poorer sort, _they’re_ good customers,--as indeed I think they are for most cooling drinks at times, for they seem to me to be _always_ thirsty. I never sell to dustmen or that sort of people. Saturday is my best day. If it’s fine and warm, I sell a gallon then, which makes about 40 penn’orths; sometimes it brings me 3_s._, sometimes 3_s._ 6_d._; it’s rather more than half profits. Take it altogether, I sell five gallons in fine dry weeks, and half that in wet; and perhaps there’s what I call a set down wet week for every two dry. Nobody has a better right to pray against wet weather than poor women like me. Ten years ago I sold almost twice as much as I can now. There’s so many more of us at present, I think, and let alone that there’s more shops keeps it too.”
Another old woman told me, that she used, “when days was longest,” to be up all night, and sell her “cruds” near Drury-lane theatre, and often received in a few hours 5_s._ or 6_s._, from “ladies and gentlemen out at night.” But the men were so rackety, she said, and she’d had her stall so often kicked over by drunken people, and no help for it, that she gave up the night-trade, and she believed it was hardly ever followed now.
To start in the curds and whey line requires the following capital:--Saucepan, for the scalding and boiling, 2_s._; stall, 5_s._; 6 mugs, 6_d._; or 6 glasses, 2_s._ 6_d._; 6 spoons, 3_d._; tin kettle on stall, 3_s._ 6_d._; pail for water to rinse glasses, 1_s._ Then for stock-money: 1 gallon skimmed milk, 1_s._ 6_d._ or 1_s._ 8_d._; and 1/2 lb. sugar, 2_d._ In all, 14_s._ 1_d._, reckoning the materials to be of the better sort.
Of the whole number of street curd-sellers, 50 dispose of as much as my informant, or 12-1/2 gallons in 3 weeks; the other 50 sell only half as much. Taking the season at 3 months, we find the consumption of curds and whey in the street to be 2,812 double gallons (as regards the ingredient of milk), at a cost to the purchasers of 421_l._, half of which is the profit accruing to the street-seller. The receipts of those having the better description of business being 9_s._ 4_d._ weekly; those of the smaller traders being 4_s._ 8_d._ There is a slight and occasional loss by the “cruds” being kept until unsaleable, in which case they are “fit for nothing but the hog-wash man.”
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF RICE-MILK.
To make rice-milk, the street-seller usually boils four quarts, of the regular measure, of “skim” with one pound of rice, which has been previously boiled in water. An hour suffices for the boiling of the milk; and the addition of the rice, swollen by the boiling water, increases the quantity to six quarts. No other process is observed, except that some sweeten their rice-milk before they offer it for sale; the majority, however, sweeten it to the customer’s liking when he is “served,” unless--to use the words of one informant--“he have a werry, werry sweet tooth indeed, sir; and that can’t be stood.” For the sweetening of six quarts, half a pound of sugar is used; for the “spicing,” half an ounce of allspice, dashed over the milk freely enough from a pepper-castor. Rice-milk is always sold at stalls arranged for the purpose, and is kept in a tin pan fitted upon a charcoal brazier, so that the “drinkable” is always hot. This apparatus generally stands on the ground alongside the stall, and is elevated only by the feet of the brazier. The “rice-milk woman,”--for the street-sellers are generally females,--dips a large breakfast-cup, holding half a pint, into the pan, puts a tea-spoonful of sugar into it, browns the whole with allspice, and receives 1_d._; a halfpennyworth is, of course, half the quantity. The rice-milk women are also sellers of oranges, chestnuts, apples, or some other fruit, as well as the rice-milk; but, sometimes, when the weather is _very_ cold and frosty, they sell rice-milk alone. There are fifty street-sellers of rice-milk in London. Saturday night is the best time of sale, when it is not uncommon for a rice-milk woman to sell six quarts; but, in a good trade, four quarts a day for six days of the week is an average. The purchasers are poor people; and a fourth of the milk is sold to boys and girls, to whom it is often a meal. “Ah, sir,” said one woman, “you should have seen how a poor man, last winter, swallowed a penn’orth. He’d been a-wandering all night, he said, and he looked it, and a gentleman gave him 2_d._, for he took pity on his hungry look, and he spent 1_d._ with me, and I gave him another cup for charity. ‘God bless the gentleman and you!’ says he, ‘it’s saved my life; if I’d bought a penny loaf, I’d have choked on it.’ He wasn’t a beggar, for I never saw him before, and I’ve never seen him again from that day to this.” The same informant told me, that she believed no rice-milk was bought by the women of the town: “it didn’t suit the likes of them.” Neither is it bought by those who are engaged in noisome trades. If there be any of the rice-milk left at night, and the saleswoman have doubts of its “keeping,” it is re-boiled with fresh rice and milk. The profit is considerable; for the ingredients, which cost less than 1_s._ 6_d._, are made into 96 pennyworths, and so to realize 8_s._ In some of the poorer localities, however, such as Rosemary-lane, only 1/2_d._ the half-pint can be obtained, and 4_s._ is then the amount received for six quarts, instead of 8_s._
To start “in rice-milk” requires 13_s._ capital, which includes a pan for boiling the milk, 2_s._; a kettle, with brazier, for stall, 4_s._; stall or stand, 5_s._; six cups, 9_d._; for stock-money 15-1/2_d._, with which is bought 4 quarts of skim-milk, 9_d._; 1 lb. of rice, 3_d._; 1/2 lb. of sugar, 2_d._; allspice, 1_d._
The season continues for four months; and calculating--a calculation within the mark--that one half of the 50 sellers have as good a trade as my informant--24 quarts weekly--and that, of the remaining 25, one half sell 12 quarts each weekly, at 1_d._ the half-pint, and the other half vend 24 quarts at 1/2_d._ the half-pint, we find that 320_l._ is annually spent in rice-milk and about 3,000 gallons of it yearly consumed in the streets of London.
OF WATER-CARRIERS.
It may surprise many to learn that there are still existing water-carriers in London, and some of them depending upon the trade for a livelihood; while others, the “odd men” of the neighbourhood, carry pails of spring water to the publicans or eating-house keepers, who may not have servants to send to the nearest pump for it, and who require it fresh and cool for those who drink it at their meals. Of these men there are, as near as I can ascertain, from 100 to 150; their charge is 1_d._ per pail. Their earnings per day 6_d._ to 1_s._ Perhaps none of them depend solely upon this labour for their support.
It is otherwise at Highgate and Hampstead, for in those places both men and women depend entirely for their daily bread on water carrying. At Hampstead the supply is derived from what may be called a double well, known as “the Conduit.” The ground is flagged, and the water is seen at each corner of a wall built to the surface of the ground (about eight feet) and surmounted by an iron rail. The water is covered over, in one corner and not in the other, and the carrier descends a step or two, dips in his pails and walks away with them when filled. The water is carried by means of a “yoke,” in the same way as we see the milk-pails carried in every street in London. The well and the field in which the Hampstead water is situated are the property of the Church, and the water is free to any one, in any quantity, either for sale or any other purpose, “without leave.” In droughts or frosts the supply fails, and the carriers have sometimes to wait hours for their “turn,” and then to bale the water into their pails with a basin. The nearest street to which the water is carried is half a mile distant. Some is carried three quarters of a mile, and some (occasionally) a mile. The two pails full, which contain seven gallons, are sold at 1-1/2_d._ The weight is about 70 lbs. Seventeen years ago the price was 3_d._; after which it fell to 2-1/2_d._, then to 2_d._, and has been 1-1/2_d._ these five or six years, while now there are three or four carriers who even “carry” at two pails a-penny to the nearer places. The supply of the well (apart from drought or frost) is fifty-six gallons an hour. The principal customers are the laundresses; but in wet weather their cisterns and water-tubs are filled, and the carriers, or the major part of them, are idle. The average earnings of the carriers are 5_s._ a week the year through. Two of them are men of seventy. There is a bench about midway to Hampstead, at which these labourers rest; and here on almost every fine day sits with them a palsied old soldier, a pensioner of about eighty, who regales them, almost daily, with long tales of Vinegar Hill, and Jemmy O’Brien (the informer), and all the terrors of the terrible times of the Irish rebellion of 1798; for the old man (himself an Irishman) had served through the whole of it. This appears to be a somewhat curious theme for constant expatiation to a band of London water-carriers.
There are now twenty individuals, fourteen men and six women, carrying at Hampstead, and twice that number at Highgate. Some leave the carrying when they get better work,--but three-fourths of the number live by it entirely. The women are the wives and widows of carriers. The men have been either mechanics or labourers, except six or eight youths (my informant was not certain which) who had been “brought up to the water, but would willingly get away from it if they could.”
A well-spoken and intelligent-looking man, dressed in thick fustian, old and greasy, “but good enough for the carrying,” gave me the following account.