Part 50
The street-sellers of muffins and crumpets rank among the old street-tradesmen. It is difficult to estimate their numbers, but they were computed for me at 500, during the winter months. They are for the most part boys, young men, or old men, and some of them infirm. There are a few girls in the trade, but very few women.
The ringing of the muffin-man’s bell--attached to which the pleasant associations are not a few--was prohibited by a recent Act of Parliament, but the prohibition has been as inoperative as that which forbad the use of a drum to the costermonger, for the muffin bell still tinkles along the streets, and is rung vigorously in the suburbs. The sellers of muffins and crumpets are a mixed class, but I am told that more of them are the children of bakers, or worn-out bakers, than can be said of any other calling. The best sale is in the suburbs. “As far as I know, sir,” said a muffin-seller, “it’s the best Hackney way, and Stoke Newington, and Dalston, and Balls Pond, and Islington; where the gents that’s in banks--the steady coves of them--goes home to their teas, and the missuses has muffins to welcome them; that’s my opinion.”
I did not hear of any street-seller who made the muffins or crumpets he vended. Indeed, he could not make the small quantity required, so as to be remunerative. The muffins are bought of the bakers, and at prices to leave a profit of 4_d._ in 1_s._ Some bakers give thirteen to the dozen to the street-sellers whom they know. The muffin-man carries his delicacies in a basket, wherein they are well swathed in flannel, to retain the heat: “People likes them warm, sir,” an old man told me, “to satisfy them they’re fresh, and they almost always _are_ fresh; but it can’t matter so much about their being warm, as they have to be toasted again. I only wish good butter was a sight cheaper, and that would make the muffins go. Butter’s half the battle.” The basket and flannels cost the muffin-man 2_s._ 6_d._ or 3_s._ 6_d._ His bell stands him in from 4_d._ to 2_s._, “according as the metal is.” The regular price of good-sized muffins from the street-sellers is a halfpenny each; the crumpets are four a penny. Some are sold cheaper, but these are generally smaller, or made of inferior flour. Most of the street-sellers give thirteen, and some even fourteen to the dozen, especially if the purchase be made early in the day, as the muffin-man can then, if he deem it prudent, obtain a further supply.
A sharp London lad of fourteen, whose father had been a journeyman baker, and whose mother (a widow) kept a small chandler’s shop, gave me the following account:--
“I turns out with muffins and crumpets, sir, in October, and continues until it gets well into the spring, according to the weather. I carries a fust-rate article; werry much so. If you was to taste ’em, sir, you’d say the same. If I sells three dozen muffins at 1/2_d._ each, and twice that in crumpets, it’s a werry fair day, werry fair; all beyond that is a _good_ day. The profit on the three dozen and the others is 1_s._, but that’s a great help, really a wonderful help, to mother, for I should be only mindin’ the shop at home. Perhaps I clears 4_s._ a week, perhaps more, perhaps less; but that’s about it, sir. Some does far better than that, and some can’t hold a candle to it. If I has a hextra day’s sale, mother’ll give me 3_d._ to go to the play, and that hencourages a young man, you know, sir. If there’s any unsold, a coffee-shop gets them cheap, and puts ’em off cheap again next morning. My best customers is genteel houses, ’cause I sells a genteel thing. I likes wet days best, ’cause there’s werry respectable ladies what don’t keep a servant, and they buys to save themselves going out. We’re a great conwenience to the ladies, sir--a great conwenience to them as likes a slap-up tea. I _have_ made 1_s._ 8_d._ in a day; that was my best. I once took only 2-1/2_d._--I don’t know why--that was my worst. The shops don’t love me--I puts their noses out. Sunday is no better day than others, or werry little. I can read, but wish I could read easier.”
Calculating 500 muffin-sellers, each clearing 4_s._ a week, we find 100_l._ a week expended on the metropolitan street sale of muffins; or, in the course of twenty weeks, 2,000_l._ Five shillings, with the price of a basket, &c., which is about 3_s._ 6_d._ more, is the capital required for a start.
OF THE STREET SALE OF SWEET-STUFF.
In this sale there are now engaged, as one of the most intelligent of the class calculated, 200 individuals, exclusive of twenty or thirty Jew boys. The majority of the sellers are also the manufacturers of the articles they vend. They have all been brought up to the calling, their parents having been in it, or having been artizans (more especially bakers) who have adopted it for some of the general reasons I have before assigned. The non-makers buy of the cheap confectioners.
The articles now vended do not differ materially, I am informed by men who have known the street trade for forty years, from those which were in demand when they began selling in the streets.
A very intelligent man, who had succeeded his father and mother in the “sweet-stuff” business--his father’s drunkenness having kept them in continual poverty--showed me his apparatus, and explained his mode of work. His room, which was on the second-floor of a house in a busy thoroughfare, had what I have frequently noticed in the abodes of the working classes--the decency of a turn-up bedstead. It was a large apartment, the rent being 3_s._ 6_d._ a week, unfurnished. The room was cheerful with birds, of which there were ten or twelve. A remarkably fine thrush was hopping in a large wicker cage, while linnets and bullfinches showed their quick bright eyes from smaller cages on all sides. These were not kept for sale but for amusement, their owner being seldom able to leave his room. The father and mother of this man cleared, twenty years ago, although at that time sugar was 6_d._ or 7_d._ the pound, from 2_l._ to 3_l._ a week by the sale of sweet-stuff; half by keeping a stall, and half by supplying small shops or other stall-keepers. My present informant, however, who has--not the best--but one of the best businesses in London, makes 24_s._ or 25_s._ a week from October to May, and scarcely 12_s._ a week during the summer months, “when people love to buy any cool fresh fruit instead of sweet-stuff.” The average profits of the generality of the trade do not perhaps exceed 10_s._ 6_d._ or 12_s._ a week, take the year round. They reside in all parts.
Treacle and sugar are the ground-work of the manufacture of all kinds of sweet-stuff. “Hardbake,” “almond toffy,” “halfpenny lollipops,” “black balls,” the cheaper “bulls eyes,” and “squibs” are all made of treacle. One informant sold more of treacle rock than of anything else, as it was dispensed in larger halfpennyworths, and no one else made it in the same way. Of peppermint rock and sticks he made a good quantity. Half-a-crown’s worth, as retailed in the streets, requires 4 lbs. of rough raw sugar at 4-1/4_d._ per lb., 1-1/2_d._ for scent (essence of peppermint), 1-1/2_d._ for firing, and 1/2_d._ for paper--in all 1_s._ 8-1/2_d._ calculating nothing for the labour and time expended in boiling and making it. The profit on the other things was proportionate, except on almond rock, which does not leave 2-1/2_d._ in a shilling--almonds being dear. Brandy balls are made of sugar, water, peppermint, and a little cinnamon. Rose acid, which is a “transparent” sweet, is composed of loaf sugar at 6-1/2_d._ per lb., coloured with cochineal. The articles sold in “sticks” are pulled into form along a hook until they present the whitish, or speckled colour desired. A quarter of a stone of materials will, for instance, be boiled for forty minutes, and then pulled a quarter of an hour, until it is sufficiently crisp and will “set” without waste. The flavouring--or “scent” as I heard it called in the trade--now most in demand is peppermint. Gibraltar rock and Wellington pillars used to be flavoured with ginger, but these “sweeties” are exploded.
Dr. Pereria, in his “Treatise on Diet,” enumerates as many as ten different varieties and preparations of sugar used for dietetical purposes. These are (1) purified or refined sugar; (2) brown or raw sugar; (3) molasses or treacle--or fluid sugar; (4) aqueous solutions of sugar--or syrups; (5) boiled sugars, or the softer kinds of confectionary; (6) sugar-candy, or crystallized cane sugar; (7) burnt sugar, or caramel; (8) hard confectionary; (9) liquorice; (10) preserves. The fifth and eighth varieties alone concern us here.
Of the several preparations of _boiled sugar_, the Doctor thus speaks, “If a small quantity of water be added to sugar, the mixture heated until the sugar dissolves, and the solution boiled to drive off part of the water, the tendency of the sugar to crystallise is diminished, or, in some cases, totally destroyed. To promote this effect, confectioners sometimes add a small portion of cream of tartar to the solution while boiling. Sugar, thus altered by heat, and sometimes variously flavoured, constitutes several preparations sold by the confectioner. _Barley-sugar_ and _acidulated drops_ are prepared in this way from white sugar: powdered tartaric acid being added to the sugar while soft. _Hardbake_ and _toffee_ are made by a similar process from brown sugar. Toffee differs from hardbake from containing butter. The ornamented sugar pieces, or _caramel_-tops, with which pastrycooks decorate their tarts, &c., are prepared in the same way. If the boiled and yet soft sugar be rapidly and repeatedly extended, and pulled over a hook, it becomes opaque and white, and then constitutes _pulled sugar_, or _penides_. Pulled sugar, variously flavoured and coloured, is sold in several forms by the preparers of hard confectionary.
“Concerning this _hard confectionary_,” Dr. Pereira says, “sugar constitutes the base of an almost innumerable variety of hard confectionary, sold under the names of _lozenges_, _brilliants_, _pipe_, _rock_, _comfits_, _nonpareils_, &c. Besides sugar, these preparations contain some flavouring ingredient, as well as flour or gum, to give them cohesiveness, and frequently colouring matter. Carraway, fruits, almonds, and pine seeds, constitute the nuclei of some of these preparations.”
One of the appliances of the street sweet-stuff trade which I saw in the room of the seller before mentioned was--Acts of Parliament. A pile of these, a foot or more deep, lay on a shelf. They are used to wrap up the rock, &c., sold. The sweet-stuff maker (I never heard them called confectioners) bought his “paper” of the stationers, or at the old book-shops. Sometimes, he said, he got works in this way in sheets which had never been cut (some he feared were stolen,) and which he retained to read at his short intervals of leisure, and then used to wrap his goods in. In this way he had read through two Histories of England! He maintained a wife, two young children, and a young sister, who could attend to the stall; his wife assisted him in his manufactures. He used 1 cwt. of sugar a week on the year’s average, 1/2 cwt. of treacle, and 5 oz. of scents, each 8_d._ an oz.
The man who has the best trade in London streets, is one who, about two years ago, introduced--after much study, I was told--short sentences into his “sticks.” He boasts of his secret. When snapped asunder, in any part, the stick presents a sort of coloured inscription. The four I saw were: “Do you love me?” The next was of less touching character, “Do you love sprats?” The others were, “Lord Mayor’s Day,” and “Sir Robert Peel.” This man’s profits are twice those of my respectable informant’s.
OF THE CUSTOMERS OF THE SWEET-STUFF STREET-SELLERS.
Another sweet-stuff man, originally a baker, but who, for a fortnight before I saw him, had been attending upon an old gentleman, disabled from an accident, gave me the following account of his customers. What I heard from the other street-sellers satisfies me of the correctness of the statement. It will be seen that he was possessed of some humour and observation:
“Boys and girls are my best customers, sir, and mostly the smallest of them; but then, again, some of them’s fifty, aye, turned fifty; Lor’ love you. An old fellow, that hasn’t a stump of a tooth in front, why, _he’ll_ stop and buy a ha’porth of hard-bake, and he’ll say, ‘I’ve a deal of the boy left about me still.’ He doesn’t show it, anyhow, in his look. I’m sometimes a thinking I’ll introduce a softer sort of toffy--boiled treacle, such as they call Tom Trot in some parts, but it’s out of fashion now, just for old people that’s ‘boys still.’ It was rolled in a ha’penny stick, sir, and sold stunnin’. The old ones wants something to suck, and not to chew. Why, when I was a lad at school, there was Jews used to go about with boxes on their backs, offering rings and pencil-cases, and lots of things that’s no real use to nobody, and they told everybody they asked to buy ‘that they sold everything,’ and us boys used to say--‘Then give’s a ha’porth of boiled treacle.’ It was a regular joke. I wish I’d stuck more to my book then, but what can’t be cured must be endured, you know. Now, those poor things that walks down there” (intimating, by a motion of the head, a thoroughfare frequented by girls of the town), “they’re often customers, but not near so good as they was ten year ago; no, indeed, nor six or eight year. _They_ like something that bites in the mouth, such as peppermint-rock, or ginger-drops. They used to buy a penn’orth or two and offer it to people, but they don’t now, I think. I’ve trusted them ha’pennies and pennies, sometimes. They always paid me. Some that held their heads high like, might say: ‘I really have no change; I’ll pay you to-morrow.’ She hadn’t no change, poor lass, sure enough, and she hadn’t nothing to change either, I’ll go bail. I’ve known women, that seemed working men’s or little shopkeeper’s wives, buy of me and ask which of my stuffs took greatest hold of the breath. I always knew what they was up to. They’d been having a drop, and didn’t want it to be detected. Why, it was only last Saturday week two niceish-looking and niceish-dressed women, comes up to me, and one was going to buy peppermint-rock, and the other says to her: ‘Don’t, you fool, he’ll only think you’ve been drinking gin-and-peppermint. Coffee takes it off best.’ So I lost my customers. They hadn’t had a _single_ drain that night, I’ll go bail, but still they didn’t look like regular lushingtons at all. I make farthing’s-worths of sweet-stuff, for children, but I don’t like it; it’s an injury to trade. I _was_ afraid that when half-farthings was coined, they’d come among children, and they’d want half a farthing of brandy-balls. Now, talking of brandy-balls, there’s a gentleman that sometimes has a minute’s chat with me, as he buys a penn’orth to take home to his children--(every reasonable man ought to marry and have children for the sake of the sweet-trade, but it ain’t the women’s fault that many’s single still)--when one gentleman I knows buys brandy-balls, he says, quite grave, ‘What kind o’ brandy do you put in them?’ ‘Not a drop of British,’ says I, ‘I can assure you; not a single drop.’ He’s not finely dressed; indeed, he’s a leetle seedy, but I know he’s a gentleman, or what’s the same thing, if he ain’t rich; for a common fellow’ll never have his boots polished that way, every day of his life; _his_ blacking bills must come heavy at Christmas. I can tell a gentleman, too, by his way of talk, ’cause he’s never bumptious. It’s the working people’s children that’s my great support, and they was a better support, by 2_s._ in every 10_s._, and more, when times was better; and next to them among my patrons is poor people. Perhaps, this last year, I’ve cleared 11_s._ a week, not more, all through. I make my own stuffs, except the drops, and they require machinery. I would get out of the streets if I could.”
Another of these traders told me, that he took more in farthings, than in halfpennies or pennies.
Calculating 200 sweet-stuff sellers, each clearing 10_s._ weekly, the outlay in rocks, candies, hard-bakes, &c., in the streets is 5,200_l._ yearly, or nearly two and a half millions of halfpenny-worths.
To start in the sweet-stuff business requires a capital of 35_s._, including a saucepan in which to boil sugar, 2_s._; weights and scales, 4_s._; stock-money (average), 4_s._; and barrow, 25_s._ If the seller be not his own manufacturer, then a tray, 1_s._ 9_d._; and stock-money, 1_s._ 6_d._; or 3_s._ 3_d._ in all will be sufficient.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF COUGH DROPS AND OF MEDICAL CONFECTIONARY.
Mr. Strutt, in his “Sports and Pastimes of the People of England” (1800), says of the Mountebank: “It is uncertain at what period this vagrant dealer in physic made his appearance in England; it is clear, however, that he figured away with much success in this country during the last two centuries.... The mountebanks usually preface the vending of their medicines with pompous orations, in which they pay as little regard to truth as to propriety.” I am informed by a gentleman observant of the matter, that within his knowledge, which extends to the commencement of the present century, no mountebank (proper) had appeared in the streets of London proclaiming the virtues of his medicines; neither with nor without his “fool.” The last seen by my informant, perhaps the latest mountebank in England, was about twenty years ago, in the vicinity of Yarmouth. He was selling “cough drops” and infallible cures for asthma, and was dressed in a periwig and an embroidered coat, with ruffles at his wrist, a sword to his side, and was a representation, in shabby genteel, of the fine gentleman of the reign of Queen Anne. The mountebank’s most legitimate successor in the street cajolery of London, as regards his “orations,” is the “Patterer,” as I shall show in my account of the street trade in stationery literature. His successor in the vending of curative confectionaries and (in a small degree) of nostrums, salves, ointments, &c., are the sellers of “cough drops” and “horehound candy,” and of the corn salves, and cures for bruises, sprains, burns, &c., &c., &c.
The street-traders in cough drops and their accompaniments, however, do not now exceed six, and of them only two--who are near relatives--manufacture their own stock-in-trade. I here treat of the street trade in “cough drops,” as a branch of the itinerant sweet-stuff trade. The “mountebank” part of the business--that is to say, “the prefacing the vending of the medicines with _pompous orations_,” I shall reserve till its proper place--viz. the “_pattering_” part of the street trade, of which an account will be given in the next Chapter.
The two principal vendors of cough drops wheel their stalls, which are fixed upon barrows, to different parts of town, but one principal stand is in Holborn. On their boards are displayed the cough cures, both in the form of “sticks” and “drops,” and a model of a small distillery. The portion inclosing the still is painted to resemble brick-work, and a tin tube, or worm, appears to carry the distillation to a receiver. Horehound, colts-foot, and some other herbs lie in a dried state on the stall, but principally horehound, to which popular (street) opinion seems to attach the most and the greatest virtues. There are also on the stalls a few bottles, tied up in the way they are dispensed from a regular practitioner, while the cough drops are in the form of sticks (1/2_d._ each), also neatly wrapped in paper. The cry is both expressive and simply descriptive--“Long life candy! Candy from herbs!”
From the most experienced person in this curious trade, I had the following statement. He entertained a full assurance, as far as I could perceive, of the excellence of his remedies, and of the high art and mystery of his calling. In persons of his class, professing to heal, no matter in what capacity, or what may be the disease, this is an important element of success. My informant, whether answering my questions or speaking of his own accord, always took time to consider, and sometimes, as will be seen, declined replying to my inquiries. From him I received the following account:--