Part 81

“The destitute mechanics,” said the Master of the Wandsworth and Clapham Union to me, “are entirely a different class from the regular vagrants; they have different habits, and indeed different features. During the whole of my experience I never knew a distressed artizan who applied for a night’s shelter, commit an act of theft; and I have seen them,” he added, “in the last stage of destitution. Occasionally they have sold the shirt and waistcoat off their backs before they applied for admittance into the workhouse, while some of them have been so weak from long starvation that they could scarcely reach the gate, and indeed had to be kept for several days in the Infirmary before their strength was recruited sufficiently to continue their journey.” “The poor mechanic,” said another of my informants, “will sit in the casual ward like a lost man, scared. It’s shocking to think a decent mechanic’s houseless. When he’s beat out he’s like a bird out of a cage; he doesn’t know where to go, or how to get a bit.”

I shall avail myself of another occasion to discuss the means of improving the condition of the street-people.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MANUFACTURED ARTICLES.

These traders consist of: (1) The vendors of metal articles; (2) Of chemical articles; (3) Of China, glass, and stone articles; (4) Of linen, cotton, and other textile fabrics; and (5) Of miscellaneous articles. In this classification I do not include second-hand articles, nor yet the traffic of those who make the articles they sell, and who are indeed street-artizans rather than street-sellers.

Under the first head are included, the vendors of razors, table and penknives, tea-trays, dog-collars, key-rings, articles of hardware, small coins and medals, pins and needles, jewellery, snuffers, candlesticks, articles of tin-ware, tools, card-counters, herring-toasters, trivets, gridirons, pans, tray-stands (as in the roasting of meat), and Dutch ovens.

Of the second description are the vendors of blacking, black-lead, lucifer matches, corn-salves, grease-removing compositions, china and glass cements, plating-balls, rat and beetle poisons, crackers, detonating-balls, and cigar-lights.

Under the third head come all street-sold articles of China, glass, or stone manufacture, including not only “crockery,” but vases, chimney-ornaments, and stone fruit.

The fourth head presents the street-vending of cotton, silken, and linen-manufactures; such as sheetings, shirtings, a variety of laces, sewing cotton, threads and tapes, articles of haberdashery and of millinery, artificial flowers, handkerchiefs, and pretended smuggled goods.

Among the fifth class, or the “miscellaneous” street-sellers, are those who vend cigars, pipes, tobacco and snuff-boxes and cigar-cases, accordions, spectacles, hats, sponge, combs and hair-brushes, shirt-buttons and coat-studs, “lots,” rhubarb, wash-leather, paper-hangings, dolls, Bristol and other toys, saw-dust, fire-wood, and pin-cushions.

There are many other manufactured articles sold in the streets, but their description will be more proper under the head of Street Artisans.

The street-sellers of manufactured articles present, as a body, so many and often such varying characteristics, that I cannot offer to give a description of them as a whole, as I have been able to do with other and less diversified classes.

Among them are several distinct and peculiar street-characters, such as the pack-men, who carry their cotton or linen goods in packs on their backs, and are all itinerants. Then there are duffers, who vend pretended smuggled goods, handkerchiefs, silks, tobacco or cigars; also, the sellers of sham sovereigns and sham gold rings for wagers. The crockery-ware and glass-sellers (known in the street-trade as “crocks”), are peculiar from their principle of _bartering_. They will sell to any one, but they _sell_ very rarely, and always clamour in preference for an exchange of their wares for wearing-apparel of any kind. They state, if questioned, that their reason for doing this is--at least I heard the statement from some of the most intelligent among them--that they do so because, if they “sold outright,” they required a hawker’s license, and could not sell or “swop” so cheap.

Some of the street-sellers of manufactured articles are also patterers. Among these are the “cheap Jacks,” or “cheap Johns;” the grease and stain removers; the corn-salve and plate-ball vendors; the sellers of sovereigns and rings for wagers; a portion of the lot-sellers; and the men who vend poison for vermin and go about the streets with live rats clinging to, or running about, their persons.

This class of street-sellers also includes many of the very old and the very young; the diseased, crippled, maimed, and blind. These poor creatures sell, and sometimes obtain a charitable penny, by offering to sell such things as boxes of lucifer-matches; cakes of blacking; boot, stay, and other laces; pins, and sewing and knitting-needles; tapes; cotton-bobbins; garters; pincushions; combs; nutmeg-graters; metal skewers and meat-hooks; hooks and eyes; and shirt-buttons.

The rest of the class may be described as merely street-sellers; toiling, struggling, plodding, itinerant tradesmen.

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF MANUFACTURED ARTICLES IN METAL.

These street-sellers are less numerous than might be imagined, when--according to my present division--the class is confined to the sellers of articles which they do not manufacture. The metal wares thus sold I have already enumerated, and I have now to describe the characteristics of the sellers.

The result of my inquiries leads me to the conclusion, that the street-vendors of any article which is the product of the skill of the handicraftsman, have been, almost always, in their first outset in a street life, connected in some capacity or other with the trade, the manufactures of which they vend.

One elderly man, long familiar with this branch of the street-trade, expressed to me his conviction that when a mechanic sought his livelihood in the streets, he naturally “gave his mind to sell what he understood. Now, in my own case,” continued my informant, “I was born and bred a tinman, and when I was driven to a street-life, I never thought of selling anything but tins. How could I, if I wished to do the thing square and proper?--it would be like trying to speak another language. If I’d started on slippers--and I knew a poor man who was set up in the streets by a charitable lady on a stock of gentlemen’s slippers--what could I have done? Why, no better than he told me he did. He was a potter down at Deptford, and knew of nothing but flower-pots, and honey-jars for grocers, and them red sorts of pottery. Poor fellow, he might have died of hunger, only the cholera came quickest. But when I’m questioned about my tins, I’m my own man; and it’s a great thing, I’m satisfied, in a street-trade, when there’s so many cheap shops, and the police and all again you, to understand the goods you’re talking about.”

This statement, I may repeat, is undoubtedly correct, so far as that a “beaten-out” mechanic, when driven to the streets, in the first instance offers to the public wares of which he understands the value and quality. Afterwards, in the experience or vagaries of a street-life, other commodities may be, or may appear to be, more remunerative, and for such the mechanic may relinquish his first articles of street-traffic. “Why, sir,” I was told, “there was one man who left razors for cabbages; ’cause one day a costermonger wot lived in the same house with him and was taken ill, asked him to go out with a barrow of summer cabbages--the costermonger’s boy went with him--and they went off so well that Joe [the former razor-seller] managed to start in the costering line, he was so encouraged.”

The street-trade in metal manufactured articles is principally itinerant. Perhaps during the week upwards of three-fourths of those carrying it on are itinerant, while on a Saturday night, perhaps, all are stationary, and almost always in the street-markets. The itinerant trade is carried on, and chiefly in the suburbs, by men, women, and children; but the children are always, or almost always, the offspring of the adult street-sellers.

The metal sold in the street may be divided into street-hardware, street-tinware, and street-jewellery. I shall begin with the former.

The street-sellers of hardware are, I am assured, in number about 100, including single men and families; for women “take their share” in the business, and children sell smaller things, such as snuffers or bread-baskets. The people pursuing the trade are of the class I have above described, with the exception of some ten or twelve who formerly made a living as servants to the gaming-booths at Epsom, Ascot, &c., &c., and “managed to live out of the races, somehow, most of the year;” since the gaming-booths have been disallowed, they have “taken to the street hardware.”

All these street-sellers obtain their supplies at “the swag-shops;” of which I shall speak hereafter. The main articles of their trade are tea-boards, waiters, snuffers, candlesticks, bread-baskets, cheese-trays, Britannia metal tea-pots and spoons, iron kettles, pans, and coffee-pots. The most saleable things, I am told by a man who has been fifteen years in this and similar street trades, are at present 18-in. tea-boards, bought at “the swags” at from 10_s._ 6_d._ a doz., to 4_s._ each; 24-in. boards, from 20_s._ the doz. to 5_s._ each; bread-baskets, 4_s._ 6_d._ the doz.; and Britannia metal tea-pots, 10_s._ the doz. These tea-pots have generally what is called “loaded bottoms;” the lower part of the vessel is “filled with composition, so as to look as if there was great weight of metal, and as if the pot would melt for almost the 18_d._ which is asked for it, and very often got.”

I learned from the same man, however, and from others in the trade, that it is far more difficult now than it was a few years ago, to sell “rubbish.” There used to be also, but not within these six or eight years, a tolerable profit realised by the street-sellers of hardware in the way of “swop.” It was common to take an old metal article, as part payment for a new one; and if the old article were of good quality, it was polished and tinkered up for sale in the Saturday evening street-markets, and often “went off well.” This traffic, however, has almost ceased to exist, as regards the street-sellers of hardware, and has been all but monopolised by the men who barter “crocks” for wearing-apparel, or any old metal. Some hardware-men who have become well known on their “rounds”--for the principal trade is in the suburbs--sell very good wares, and at moderate profits.

“It’s a poor trade, sir, is the hardware,” said one man carrying it on, “and street trades are mostly poor trades, for I’ve tried many a one of them. I was brought up a clown, I may say; my father died when I was a child, and I might have been a clown still but for an accident (a rupture). That’s long ago,--I can’t say how long; but I know that before I was fifteen, I many a time wished I was dead, and I have many a time since. Why the day before yesterday, from 9 in the morning to 11 at night, I didn’t take a farthing. Some days I don’t earn 1_s._, and I have a mother depending upon me who can do little or nothing. I’m a teetotaller; if I wasn’t we shouldn’t have a meal a day. I never was fond of drink, and if I’m ever so weary and out of sorts, and worried for a meal’s meat, I can’t say I ever long for a drop to cheer me up. Sometimes I can’t get coffee, let alone anything else. O, I suffer terribly. Day after day I get wet through, and have nothing to take home to my mother at last. Our principal food is bread and butter, and tea. Not fish half so often as many poor people. I suppose, because we don’t care for it. I know that our living, the two of us, stands to less than 1_s._ a day,--not 6_d._ a piece. Then I have two rents to pay. No, sir, not for two places; but I pay 2_s._ a week for a room, a tidy bit of a chamber, furnished, and 1_s._ a week rent,--I call it rent, for a loan of 5_s._ I’ve paid 1_s._ a week for four weeks on it, and must keep paying until I can hand over the 5_s._, with 1_s._ for rent added to it, all in one sum. If I could tip up the 5_s._ the day after I’d paid the last week’s 1_s._, I must pay another shilling. The man who lends does nothing else; he lives by lending, and by letting out a few barrows to costermongers, and other street-people. I wish I could take a farewell sight of them.”

The principal traffic carried on by these street-sellers is in the suburbs. Women constitute their sole customers, or nearly so. Their profits fluctuate from 20 per cent. to 100 per cent. The bread-baskets, which they buy at 4_s._ 6_d._ the doz., they retail at 6_d._ each; for it is very difficult, I have frequently been told, to get a price between 6_d._ and 1_s._ This, however, relates only to those things which are not articles of actual necessity. Half of these street-sellers, I am assured, take on an average from 20_s._ to 25_s._ weekly the year through; a quarter take 15_s._, and the remaining quarter from 7_s._ 6_d._ to 10_s._ Calculating an average taking of 15_s._ each per week, throughout the entire class, men, women, and children, we find 3,900_l._ expended in street-sold hardwares. Ten years ago, I am told, the takings were not less than 2,000_l._

The following is an extract from accounts kept, not long ago, by a street-seller of hardware. His principal sale was snuffers, knives and forks, iron candlesticks, padlocks, and bed-screws. His stock cost him 35_s._ on the Monday morning, and his first week was his _best_, which I here subjoin:

Receipts. Profits. Monday 8_s._ 3_s._ 0_d._ Tuesday 5 2 3 Wednesday 4 1 6 Thursday (always a slack day) 3 --------- Friday (a better day about the docks, when people are paid) 7 3 0 Saturday Morning and Even. 23 6 1 -- ---------- 50 15 10

The following is the _worst_ week in the account-books. The street-seller after this (about half a year ago) sold his stock to a small shopkeeper, and went into another business.

Receipts. Profits. _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ Monday (very cold) a common bed-screw 0 4 0 1-1/4 Tuesday ------- --------- Wednesday 1 0 0 5 Thursday (sold cheap) 1 1 0 3 Friday ------- ---------- Saturday 1 7 0 8 ------- ---------- 4 0 1 5-1/4

OF THE CHEAP JOHNS, OR STREET HANSELLERS.

This class of street-salesmen, who are perhaps the largest dealers of all in hardware, are not so numerous as they were some few years ago--the Excise Laws, as I have before remarked, having interfered with their business. The principal portion of those I have met are Irishmen, who, notwithstanding, generally “hail” from Sheffield, and all their sales are effected in an attempt at the Yorkshire dialect, interspersed, however, with an unmistakeable brogue. The brogue is the more apparent when cheap John gets a little out of temper--if his sales are flat, for instance, he’ll say, “By J--s, I don’t belaive you’ve any money with you, or that you’ve lift any at home, at all, at all. Bad cess to you!”

There are, however, many English cheap Johns, but few of them are natives of Sheffield or Birmingham, from which towns they invariably “hail.” Their system of selling is to attract a crowd of persons by an harangue after the following fashion: “Here I am, the original cheap John from Sheffield. I’ve not come here to get money; not I; I’ve come here merely for the good of the public, and to let you see how you’ve been imposed upon by a parcel of pompous shopkeepers, who are not content with less than 100 per cent. for rubbish. They got up a petition--which I haven’t time to read to you just now--offering me a large sum of money to keep away from here. But no, I had too much friendship for you to consent, and here I am, cheap John, born without a shirt, one day while my mother was out, in a haystack; consequently I’ve no parish, for the cows eat up mine, and therefore I’ve never no fear of going to the workhouse. I’ve more money than the parson of the parish--I’ve in this cart a cargo of useful and cheap goods; can supply you with anything, from a needle to an anchor. Nobody _can_ sell as cheap as me, seeing that I gets all my goods upon credit, and never means to pay for them. Now then, what shall we begin with? Here’s a beautiful guard-chain; if it isn’t silver, it’s the same colour--I don’t say it isn’t silver, nor I don’t say it is--in that affair use your own judgment. Now, in the reg’lar way of trade, you shall go into any shop in town, and they will ask you 1_l._ 18_s._ 6_d._ for an article not half so good, so what will you say for this splendid chain? Eighteen and sixpence without the pound? What, that’s too much! Well, then say 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10 shillings; what, none of you give ten shillings for this beautiful article? See how it improves a man’s appearance” (hanging the chain round his neck). “Any young man here present wearing this chain will always be shown into the parlour instead of the tap-room; into the best pew in church, when he and--but the advantages the purchaser of this chain will possess I haven’t time to tell. What! no buyers? Why, what’s the matter with ye? Have you no money, or no brains? But I’ll ruin myself for your sakes. Say 9_s._ for this splendid piece of jewellery--8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1--a shilling, will anybody give a shilling? Well, here 11_d._, 10_d._, 9_d._, 8_d._, 7_d._, 6-1/2_d._, 6_d._! Is there ever a buyer at sixpence? Now I’ll ask no more and I’ll take no less; sell it or never sell it.” The concluding words are spoken with peculiar emphasis, and after saying them the cheap John never takes any lower sum. A customer perhaps is soon obtained for the guard-chain, and then the vendor elevates his voice; “Sold to a very respectable gentleman, with his mouth between his nose and chin, a most remarkable circumstance. I believe I’ve just one more--this is better than the last; I must have a shilling for this. Sixpence? To you, sir. Sold again, to a gentleman worth 30,000_l._ a year; only the right owner keeps him out of it. I believe I’ve just one more; yes, here it is; it’s brighterer, longerer, strongerer, and betterer than the last. I must have at least tenpence for this. Well then, 9, 8, 7, 6; take this one for a sixpence. Sold again, to a gentleman, his father’s pet and his mother’s joy. Pray, sir, does your mother know you’re out? Well, I don’t think I’ve any more, but I’ll look; yes, here is _one_ more. Now this is better than all the rest. Sold again, to a most respectable gentleman, whose mother keeps a chandler’s shop, and whose father turns the mangle.” In this manner the cheap John continues to sell his guard-chain, until he has drained his last customer for that particular commodity. He has always his remark to make relative to the purchaser. The cheap John always takes care to receive payment before he hazards his jokes, which I need scarcely remark are ready made, and most of them ancient and worn threadbare, the joint property of the whole fraternity of cheap Johns. After supplying his audience with one particular article, he introduces another: “Here is a carving-knife and fork, none of your wasters, capital buck-horn handle, manufactured of the best steel, in a regular workmanlike manner; fit for carving in the best style, from a sparrow to a bullock. I don’t ask 7_s._ 6_d._ for this--although go over to Mr. ----, the ironmonger, and he will have the impudence to ask you 15_s._ for a worse article.” (The cheap Johns always make comparisons as to their own prices and the shopkeepers, and sometimes mention their names.) “I say 5_s._ for the carving-knife and fork. Why, it’s an article that’ll almost fill your children’s bellies by looking at it, and will always make 1 lb. of beef go as far as 6 lb. carved by any other knife and fork. Well, 4_s._, 3_s._, 2_s._, 1_s._ 11_d._, 1_s._ 10_d._, 1_s._ 9_d._, 1_s._ 8_d._, 1_s._ 7_d._, 18_d._ I ask no more, nor I’ll take no less.” The salesman throughout his variety of articles indulges in the same jokes, and holds out the same inducements. I give a few.

“_This_ is the original teapot” (producing one), “formerly invented by the Chinese; the first that ever was imported by those celebrated people--only two of them came over in three ships. If I do not sell this to-day, I intend presenting it to the British Museum or the Great Exhibition. It is mostly used for making tea,--sometimes by ladies, for keeping a little drop on the sly; it is an article constructed upon scientific principles, considered to require a lesser quantity of tea to manufacture the largest quantity of tea-water, than any other teapot now in use--largely patronised by the tea-totallers. Now, here’s a fine pair of bellows! Any of you want to raise the wind? This is a capital opportunity, if you’ll try. I’ll tell you how; buy these of me for 3_s._ 6_d._, and go and pawn them for 7_s._ Will you buy ’em, sir? No! well, then, you be blowed! Let’s see--I said 3_s._ 6_d._; it’s too little, but as I have said it, they must go; well--3_s._,” &c. &c. “Capital article to chastise the children or a drunken husband. Well, take ’em for 1_s._--I ask no more, and I’ll take no less.”