Part 54
“From the hasty glance I have taken at the patterers, any well-constructed mind may deduce the following inference: although a great amount of intelligence sometimes consists with a great want of principle, that an utter want of education, or _mis_-education, leaves man, like a reed floating on the stream of time, to follow every direction which the current of affairs may give him.
“There is yet another and a larger class, who are wanderers from choice,--who would rather be street-orators, and quacks, and performers, than anything else in the world. In nine cases out of ten, the street-patterers are persons of intemperate habits, no veracity, and destitute of any desire to improve their condition, even where they have the chance. One of this crew was lately engaged at a bazaar; he had 18_s._ a week, and his only work was to walk up and down and extol the articles exhibited. This was too monotonous a life; I happened to pass him by as he was taking his wages for the week, and heard him say, ‘I shall cut this b--y work; I can earn more on the streets, and be my own master.’”
It would be a mistake to suppose that the patterers, although a vagrant, are a disorganized class. There is a telegraphic dispatch between them, through the length and breadth of the land. If two patterers (previously unacquainted) meet in the provinces, the following, or something like it, will be their conversation:--“Can you ‘voker romeny’ (can you speak cant)? What is your ‘monekeer’ (name)?”--Perhaps it turns out that one is “White-headed Bob,” and the other “Plymouth Ned.” They have a “shant of gatter” (pot of beer) at the nearest “boozing ken” (ale-house), and swear eternal friendship to each other. The old saying, that “When the liquor is in, the wit is out,” is remarkably fulfilled on these occasions, for they betray to the “flatties” (natives) all their profits and proceedings.
It is to be supposed that, in country districts, where there are no streets, the patterer is obliged to call at the houses. As they are mostly without the hawker’s licence, and sometimes find wet linen before it is lost, the rural districts are not fond of their visits; and there are generally two or three persons in a village reported to be “gammy,” that is (unfavourable). If a patterer has been “crabbed,” that is (offended) at any of the “cribbs” (houses), he mostly chalks a signal on or near the door. I give one or two instances:
[diamond] “Bone,” meaning good.
[triangle, point down] “Cooper’d,” spoiled by the imprudence of some other patterer.
[square] “Gammy,” likely to have you taken up.
[circle with dot] “Flummuxed,” sure of a month in quod.
In most lodging-houses there is an old man who is the guide to every “walk” in the vicinity, and who can tell every house, on every round, that is “good for a cold ’tater.” In many cases there is over the kitchen mantle-piece a map of the district, dotted here and there with memorandums of failure or success.
Patterers are fond of carving their names and avocations about the houses they visit. The old jail at Dartford has been some years a “padding-ken.” In one of the rooms appears the following autographs:
“Jemmy, the Rake, bound to Bristol; bad beds, but no bugs. Thank God for all things.”
“Razor George and his moll slept here the day afore Christmas; just out of ‘stir’ (jail), for ‘muzzling a peeler.’”
“Scotch Mary, with ‘driz’ (lace), bound to Dover and back, please God.”
Sometimes these inscriptions are coarse and obscene; sometimes very well written and orderly. Nor do they want illustrations.
At the old factory, Lincoln, is a portrait of the town beadle, formerly a soldier; it is drawn with different-coloured chalks, and ends with the following couplet:
“You are a B for false swearing, In hell they’ll roast you like a herring.”
Concubinage is very common among patterers, especially on their travels; they have their regular rounds, and call the peregrination “going on circuit.” For the most part they are early risers; this gives them a facility for meeting poor girls who have had a night’s shelter in the union workhouses. They offer such girls some refreshment,--swear they are single men,--and promise comforts certainly superior to the immediate position of their victims. Consent is generally obtained; perhaps a girl of 14 or 15, previously virtuous, is induced to believe in a promise of constant protection, but finds herself, the next morning, ruined and deserted; nor is it unlikely that, within a month or two, she will see her seducer in the company of a dozen incidental wives. A gray-headed miscreant called “Cutler Tom” boasts of 500 such exploits; and there is too great reason to believe that the picture of his own drawing is not greatly overcharged.
Some of the patterers are married men, but of this class very few are faithful to the solemn obligation. I have heard of a renowned patterer of this class who was married to four women, and had lived in criminal intercourse with his own sister, and his own daughter by one of the wives. This sad rule has, however, I am happy to state, some splendid exceptions. There is a man called “Andy”--well known as the companion of “Hopping Ned;” this “Andy” has a wife of great personal attractions, a splendid figure, and teeth without a parallel. She is a strictly-virtuous woman, a most devoted wife, and tender mother; very charitable to any one in want of a meal, and very constant (she is a Catholic) in her religious duties. Another man of the same school, whose name has escaped me, is, with his wife, an exception to the stigma on almost the whole class; the couple in question have no children. The wife, whose name is Maria, has been in every hospital for some complaint in her knees, probably white swelling: her beauty is the theme of applause, and whenever she opens her mouth silence pervades the “paddin’ ken.” Her common conversation is music and mathematics combined, her reading has been masculine and extensive, and the whisper of calumny has never yet attacked her own demeanour or her husband’s.
Of patterers who have children, many are very exemplary; sending them to Day and Sunday-schools, causing them to say grace before and after meals, to attend public worship, and always to speak the truth: these, instances, however, stand in fearful contrast with the conduct of other parents.
“I have seen,” proceeds my reverend informant, “fathers and mothers place their boys and girls in positions of incipient enormity, and command them to use language and gestures to each other, which would make an harlot blush, and almost a heathen tremble. I have hitherto viewed the patterer as a salesman,--having something in his hand, on whose merits, real or pretended, he talks people out of their money. By slow degrees prosperity rises, but rapid is the advance of evil. The patterer sometimes gets ‘out of stock,’ and is obliged, at no great sacrifice of conscience, to ‘patter’ in another strain. In every large town sham official documents, with crests, seals, and signatures, can be got for half-a-crown. Armed with these, the patterer becomes a ‘lurker,’--that is, an impostor; his papers certify any and every ‘ill that flesh is heir to.’ Shipwreck is called a ‘shake lurk;’ loss by fire is a ‘glim.’ Sometimes the petitioner has had a horse, which has dropped dead with the mad staggers; or has a wife ill or dying, and six or seven children at once sickening of the small-pox. Children are borrowed to support the appearance; the case is certified by the minister and churchwardens of a parish which exists only in imagination; and as many people dislike the trouble of investigation, the patterer gets enough to raise a stock in trade, and divides the spoil between the swag-shop and the gin-palace. Sometimes they are detected, and get a ‘drag’ (three months in prison). They have many narrow escapes: one occurs to me, of a somewhat ludicrous character. A patterer and lurker (now dead) known by the name of ‘Captain Moody,’ unable to get a ‘fakement’ written or printed, was standing almost naked in the streets of a neighbouring town. A gentleman stood still and heard his piteous tale, but having been ‘done’ more than once, he resolved to examine the affair, and begged the petitioner to conduct him to his wife and children, who were in a garret on a bed of languishing, with neither clothes, food, nor fire, but, it appeared, with faith enough to expect a supply from ‘Him who feedeth the ravens,’ and in whose sacred name even a cold ’tater was implored. The patterer, or half-patterer and half-beggar, took the gentleman (who promised a sovereign if every thing was square) through innumerable and intricate windings, till he came to an outhouse or sort of stable. He saw the key outside the door, and begged the gentleman to enter and wait till he borrowed a light of a neighbour, to show him up-stairs. The illumination never arrived, and the poor charitable man found that the miscreant had locked him into the stable. The patterer went to the padding-ken,--told the story with great glee, and left that locality within an hour of the occurrence.”
[Concerning the mendicancy and vagrancy of patterers, I shall have more to say when I speak of vagrancy in general, and when I describe the general state and characteristics of the low lodging-houses in London, and those in the country, which are in intimate connection with the metropolitan abodes of the vagrant. My present theme is the London patterer, who is also a street-seller.]
OF THE PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS OF STREET-LITERATURE.
The best known, and the most successful printer and publisher of all who have directed their industry to supply the “paper” in demand for street sale, and in every department of street literature, was the late “Jemmy Catnach,” who is said to have amassed upwards of 10,000_l._ in the business. He is reported to have made the greater part of this sum during the trial of Queen Caroline, by the sale of whole-sheet “papers,” descriptive of the trial, and embellished with “splendid illustrations.” The next to Catnach stood the late “Tommy Pitt,” of the noted toy and marble-warehouse. These two parties were the Colburn and Bentley of the “paper” trade. Catnach retired from business some years ago, and resided in a country-house at Barnet, but he did not long survive his retirement. “He was an out and out sort,” said one old paper-worker to me, “and if he knew you--and he could judge according to the school you belonged to, if he hadn’t known you long--he was friendly for a bob or two, and sometimes for a glass. He knew the men that was stickers though, and there was no glass for them. Why, some of his customers, sir, would have stuck to him long enough, if there’d been a chance of another glass--supposing they’d managed to get _one_--and then would have asked him for a coach home! When I called on him, he used to say, in his north country way--he wasn’t Scotch, but somewhere north of England--and he was pleasant with it, ‘Well, d-- you, how are you?’ He got the cream of the pail, sir.”
The present street literature printers and publishers are, Mrs. Ryle (Catnach’s niece and successor), Mr. Birt, and Mr. Paul (formerly with Catnach), all of the Seven Dials; Mr. Powell (formerly of Lloyd’s), Brick-lane, Whitechapel; and Mr. Good, Aylesbury-street, Clerkenwell. Mr. Phairs, of Westminster; Mr. Taylor, of the Waterloo-road; and Mr. Sharp, of Kent-street, Borough, have discontinued street printing. One man greatly regretted Mr. Taylor’s discontinuing the business; “he was so handy for the New-cut, when it _was_ the New-cut.” Some classes of patterers, I may here observe, work in “schools” or “mobs” of two, three, or four, as I shall afterwards show.
The authors and poets who give its peculiar literature, alike in prose or rhyme, to the streets, are now six in number. They are all in some capacity or other connected with street-patter or song, and the way in which a narrative or a “copy of werses” is prepared for press is usually this:--The leading members of the “schools,” some of whom refer regularly to the evening papers, when they hear of any out-of-the-way occurrence, resort to the printer and desire its publication in a style proper for the streets. This is usually done very speedily, the school (or the majority of them) and the printer agreeing upon the author. Sometimes an author will voluntarily prepare a piece of street literature and submit it to a publisher, who, as in the case of other publishers, accepts or declines, as he believes the production will or will not prove remunerative. Sometimes the school carry the manuscript with them to the printer, and undertake to buy a certain quantity, to insure publication. The payment to the author is the same in all cases--a shilling.
Concerning the history and character of our street and public-house literature, I shall treat hereafter, when I can comprise the whole, and after the descriptions of the several classes engaged in the trade will have paved the way for the reader’s better appreciation of the curious and important theme. I say, _important_; because the street-ballad and the street-narrative, like all popular things, have their influence on masses of the people. Specimens will be found adduced, as I describe the several classes, or in the statements of the patterers.
It must be borne in mind that the street author is closely restricted in the quality of his effusion. It must be such as the patterers approve, as the chaunters can chaunt, the ballad-singers sing, and--above all--such as street-buyers will buy. One chaunter, who was a great admirer of the “Song of the Shirt,” told me that if Hood himself had written the “Pitiful Case of Georgy Sloan and his Wife,” it would not have sold so well as a ballad he handed to me, from which I extract a verse:
“Jane Willbred we did starve and beat her very hard I confess we used her very cruel, But now in a jail two long years we must bewail, We don’t fancy mustard in the gruel.”
What I have said of the _necessity_ which controls street authorship, may also be said of the art which is sometimes called in to illustrate it.
The paper now published for the streets is classed as quarter sheets, which cost (wholesale) 1_s._ a gross; half sheets, which cost 2_s._; and whole or broad sheets (such as for executions), which cost 3_s._ 6_d._ a gross the first day, and 3_s._ the next day or two, and afterwards, but only if a ream be taken, 5_s._ 6_d._; a ream contains forty dozen. When “illustrated,” the charge is from 3_d._ to 1_s._ per ream extra. The books, for such cases as the Sloanes, or the murder of Jael Denny, are given in books--which are best adapted for the suburban and country trade, when London is “worked” sufficiently--are the “whole sheet” printed so as to fold into eight pages, each side of the paper being then, of course, printed upon. A book is charged from 6_d._ to 1_s._ extra (to a whole sheet) per gross, and afterwards the same extra per ream.
OF LONG SONG-SELLERS.
I have this week given a daguerreotype of a well-known long-song seller, and have preferred to give it as the trade, especially as regards London, has all but disappeared, and it was curious enough. “Long songs” first appeared between nine and ten years ago.
The long-song sellers did not depend upon patter--though some of them pattered a little--to attract customers, but on the veritable cheapness and novel form in which they vended popular songs, printed on paper rather wider than this page, “three songs abreast,” and the paper was about a yard long, which constituted the “three” yards of song. Sometimes three slips were pasted together. The vendors paraded the streets with their “three yards of new and popular songs” for a penny. The songs are, or were, generally fixed to the top of a long pole, and the vendor “cried” the different titles as he went along. This branch of “the profession” is confined solely to the summer; the hands in winter usually taking to the sale of song-books, it being impossible to exhibit “the three yards” in wet or foggy weather. The paper songs, as they fluttered from a pole, looked at a little distance like huge much-soiled white ribbons, used as streamers to celebrate some auspicious news. The cry of one man, in a sort of recitative, or, as I heard it called by street-patterers, “sing-song,” was, “Three yards a penny! Three yards a penny! Beautiful songs! Newest songs! Popular Songs! Three yards a penny! Song, song, songs!” Others, however, were generally content to announce merely “Three yards a penny!” One cried “Two under fifty a fardy!” As if two hundred and fifty songs were to be sold for a farthing. The whole number of songs was about 45. They were afterwards sold at a halfpenny, but were shorter and fewer. It is probable that at the best had the songs been subjected to the admeasurement of a jury, the result might have been as little satisfactory as to some tradesmen who, however, after having been detected in attempts to cheat the poor in weights and scales, and to cheat them hourly, are still “good men and true” enough to be jurymen and parliamentary electors. The songs, I am informed, were often about 2-1/2 yards, (not as to paper but as to admeasurement of type); 3 yards, occasionally, at first, and not often less than 2 yards.
The crying of the titles was not done with any other design than that of expressing the great number of songs purchasable for “the small charge of one penny.” Some of the patterers I conversed with would have made it sufficiently droll. One man told me that he had cried the following songs in his three yards, and he believed in something like the following order, but he had cried penny song books, among other things, lately, and might confound his more ancient and recent cries:
“I sometimes began,” he said, “with singing, or trying to sing, for I’m no vocalist, the first few words of any song, and them quite loud. I’d begin
‘The Pope he leads a happy life, He knows no care’----
‘Buffalo gals, come out to-night;’ ‘Death of Nelson;’ ‘The gay cavalier;’ ‘Jim along Josey;’ ‘There’s a good time coming;’ ‘Drink to me only;’ ‘Kate Kearney;’ ‘Chuckaroo-choo, choo-choo-choot-lah;’ ‘Chockala-roony-ninkaping-nang;’ ‘Paga-daway-dusty-kanty-key;’ ‘Hottypie-gunnypo-china-coo’ (that’s a Chinese song, sir); ‘I dreamed that I dwelt in marble halls;’ ‘The standard bearer;’ ‘Just like love;’ ‘Whistle o’er the lave o’t;’ ‘Widow Mackree;’ ‘I’ve been roaming;’ ‘Oh! that kiss;’ ‘The old English gentleman,’ &c., &c. &c. I dares say they was all in the three yards, or was once, and if they wasn’t there was others as good.”
The chief purchasers of the “long songs” were boys and girls, but mostly boys, who expended 1_d._ or 1/2_d._ for the curiosity and novelty of the thing, as the songs were not in the most readable form. A few working people bought them for their children, and some women of the town, who often buy anything fantastic, were also customers.
When “the three yards was at their best,” the number selling them was about 170; the wholesale charge is from 3_d._ to 5_d._ a dozen, according to size. The profit of the vendors in the first instance was about 8_d._ a dozen. When the trade had all the attractions of novelty, some men sold ten dozen on fine days, and for three or four of the summer months; so clearing between 6_s._ and 7_s._ a day. This, however, was not an average, but an average might be at first 21_s._ a week profit. I am assured that if twenty persons were selling long songs in the street last summer it was “the outside,” as long songs are now “for fairs and races and country work.” Calculating that each cleared 9_s._ in a week, and to clear that took 15_s._, the profit being smaller than it used to be, as many must be sold at 1/2_d._ each--we find 120_l._ expended in long songs in the streets. The character of the vendor is that of a patterer of inferior genius.
The stock-money required is 1_s._ to 2_s._; which with 2_d._ for a pole, and 1/2_d._ for paste, is all the capital needed. Very few were sold in the public-houses, as the vendors scrupled to expose them there, “for drunken fellows would snatch them, and make belts of them for a lark.”
OF RUNNING PATTERERS.
Few of the residents in London--but chiefly those in the quieter streets--have not been aroused, and most frequently in the evening, by a hurly-burly on each side of the street. An attentive listening will not lead any one to an accurate knowledge of what the clamour is about. It is from a “mob” or “school” of the running patterers (for both those words are used), and consists of two, three, or four men. All these men state that the greater the noise they make, the better is the chance of sale, and better still when the noise is on each side of a street, for it appears as if the vendors were proclaiming such interesting or important intelligence, that they were vieing with one another who should supply the demand which must ensue. It is not possible to ascertain with any certitude _what_ the patterers are so anxious to sell, for only a few leading words are audible. One of the cleverest of running patterers repeated to me, in a subdued tone, his announcements of murders. The words “Murder,” “Horrible,” “Barbarous,” “Love,” “Mysterious,” “Former Crimes,” and the like, could only be caught by the ear, but there was no announcement of anything like “particulars.” If, however, the “paper” relate to any well-known criminal, such as Rush, the name is given distinctly enough, and so is any new or pretended fact. The running patterers describe, or profess to describe, the contents of their papers as they go rapidly along, and they seldom or ever stand still. They usually deal in murders, seductions, crim.-cons., explosions, alarming accidents, “assassinations,” deaths of public characters, duels, and love-letters. But popular, or notorious, murders are the “great goes.” The running patterer cares less than other street-sellers for bad weather, for if he “work” on a wet and gloomy evening, and if the work be “a cock,” which is a fictitious statement or even a pretended fictitious statement, there is the less chance of any one detecting the _ruse_. But of late years no new “cocks” have been printed, excepting for temporary purposes, such as I have specified as under its appropriate head in my account of “Death and Fire-Hunters.” Among the old stereotyped “cocks” are love-letters. One is well known as “The Husband caught in a Trap,” and being in an epistolary form subserves any purpose: whether it be the patterer’s aim to sell the “Love Letters” of any well-known person, such as Lola Montes, or to fit them for a local (pretended) scandal, as the “Letters from a Lady in this neighbourhood to a Gentleman not 100 miles off.”
Of running patterers there are now in London from 80 to 100. They reside--some in their own rooms, but the majority in lodging-houses--in or near Westminster, St Giles’s, Whitechapel, Stratford, Deptford, Wandsworth, and the Seven Dials. The “Dials,” however, is their chief locality, being the residence of the longest-established printers, and is the “head meet” of the fraternity.