Part 84
Another window presented even a more “miscellaneous assortment;” dirks (apparently not very formidable weapons), a mess of steel pens, in brown-paper packages and cases, and of black-lead pencils, pipe-heads, cigar-cases, snuff-boxes, razors, shaving-brushes, letter-stamps, metal tea-pots, metal tea-spoons, glass globes with artificial flowers and leaves within the glass (an improvement one man thought on the old ornament of a reel in a bottle), Peel medals, Exhibition medals, roulette-boxes, scent bottles, quill pens with artificial flowers in the feathery part, fans, side-combs, glass pen-holders, and pot figures (caricatures) of Louis Philippe, carrying a very red umbrella, Marshal Haynau, with some instrument of torture in his hand, while over all boomed a huge English seaman, in yellow waistcoat and with a brick-coloured face.
Sometimes the furniture of a swag-shop window is less plentiful, but quite as heterogenous. In one were only American clocks, French toys (large), opera-glasses, knives and forks, and powder-flasks.
In some windows the predominant character is jewellery. Ear-drops (generally gilt), rings of all kinds, brooches of every size and shade of coloured glass, shawl-pins, shirt-studs, necklaces, bead purses, small paintings of the Crystal-palace, in “burnished ‘gold’ frames,” watch-guards, watch-seals (each with three impressions or mottoes), watch-chains and keys, “silver” tooth-picks, medals, and snuff-boxes. It might be expected that the jewellery shops would present the most imposing display of any; they are, on the contrary, among the dingiest, as if it were not worth the trouble to put clean things in the window, but merely what sufficed to characterise the nature of the trade carried on.
Of the twenty-three swag-shops in question, five were confined to the trade in all the branches of stationery. Of these I saw one, the large window of which was perfectly packed from bottom to top with note-paper, account and copy-books, steel-pens, pencils, sealing-wax, enamelled wafers (in boxes), ink-stands, &c.
Of the other shops, two had cases of watches, with no attempt at display, or even arrangement. “Poor things,” I was told by a person familiar with the trade in them, “fit only to offer to countrymen when they’ve been drinking at a fair, and think themselves clever.”
I have so far described the exterior of these street-dealers’ bazaars, the swag-shops, in what may be called their head-quarters. Upon entering some of these places of business, spacious rooms are seen to extend behind the shop or warehouse which opens to the street. Some are almost blocked up with what appears a litter of packing-cases, packages, and bales--but which are no doubt ordered systematically enough--while the shelves are crammed with goods in brown paper, or in cases or boxes. This uniformity of package, so to speak, has the effect of destroying the true character of these swag store-rooms; for they present the appearance of only three or four different kinds of merchandise being deposited on a range of shelves, when, perhaps, there are a hundred. In some of these swag-shops it appears certain, both from what fell under my own observation, and from what I learned through my inquiries of persons long familiar with such places, that the “litter” I have spoken of is disposed so as to present the appearance of an affluence of goods without the reality of possession.
In no warehouses (properly “swag,” or wholesale traders) is there any arranged display of the wares vended. “Ve don’t vant people here,” one street-seller had often heard a swag-shopkeeper say, “as looks about them, and says, ‘’Ow purty!--Vot nice things!’ Ve vants to sell, and not to show. Ve is all for bisness, and be d----d.” All of these places which I saw were dark, more or less so, in the interior, as if a customer’s inspection were uncared for.
Some of the swag-shop people present cards, or “circulars with prices,” to their street and other customers, calling attention to the variety of their wares. These circulars are not given without inquiry, as if it were felt that one must not be wasted. On one I find the following enumeration:--
Shopkeepers and Dealers supplied with the following Articles:--
CLOCKS--American, French, German, and English eight-day dials.
WATCHES--Gold and Silver.
MUSICAL BOXES--Two, Four, Six, and Eight Airs.
WATCH-GLASSES--Common Flint, Geneva, and Lunettes.
MAIN-SPRINGS--Blue and Straw-colour, English and Geneva.
WATCH MATERIALS--Of every description.
JEWELLERY--A general assortment.
SPECTACLES--Gold, Silver, Steel, Horn, and Metal Frames, Concave, Convex, Coloured, and Smoked Eyes.
TELESCOPES--One, two, and three draws.
MATHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS.
COMBS--Side, Dressing, Curl, Pocket, Ivory, Small-Tooth, &c.
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS--Violins, Violincellos, Bows, &c., Flutes, Clarionets, Trombones, Ophoclides, Cornopeans, French-Horns, Post-Horns, Trumpets, and Passes, Violin Tailboards, Pegs, and Bridges.
ACCORDIONS--French and German of every size and style.
It must not be thought that swag-shops are mainly repositories of “fancy” articles, for such is not the case. I have described only the “windows” and outward appearances of these places--the interior being little demonstrative of the business; but the bulkier and more useful articles of swag traffic cannot be exposed in a window. In the miscellaneous (or Birmingham and Sheffield) shops, however, the useful and the “fancy” are mixed together; as is shown by the following extracts from the Circular of one of the principal swag-houses. I give each head, with an occasional statement of prices. The firm describe themselves as “Wholesale, Retail, and Export Furnishing Ironmongers, General Hardwaremen, Manufacturers of Clocks, Watches, and Steel Pens, and Importers of Toys, Beads, and other Foreign Manufactures.”
_Table Cutlery._
_s._ _d._ Common knives and forks, per doz. 2 0 Ivory-handle table knives and fork, per set of fifty-pieces 30 0 Tables, per doz. 15 0 Desserts, per doz. 11 3 Carvers, per pair 4 0
_Fire-Irons._
Strong wrought-iron for kitchens, per set 2_s._ to 6 0 Ditto for parlours or libraries, bright pans, 4_s._ 6_d._ to 7 0
_Fenders._
Kitchen fenders, 3 ft. long, with sliding bar 3 0 Green ditto, brass tops, for bed rooms 1 8
“Britannia Metal Goods” (tea-pots, &c.), “German Silver Goods” (tea-spoons, 1_s._ to 2_s._ per dozen, &c.).
_Bellows._
Kitchen, each 10_d._ to 2 0 Parlour ditto, brass pipes and nails 2_s._ 3_d._ to 3 0
Japanned goods, brass goods, iron saucepans, oval iron pots, iron tea-kettles, &c., iron stew-pans, &c. The prices here run very systematically:--
One quart 1 2 Three pints 1 8 Two quarts 2 0 Three quarts 3 0 Four quarts 3 9 Five quarts 4 0
Patent enamelled saucepans, oval tin boilers, tin saucepans, tea-kettles, coffee-pots. In all these useful articles the prices range in the same way as in the iron stew-pans. Copper goods (kettles, coal-scoops, &c.), tin fish-kettles, dish-covers, rosewood workboxes, glass, brushes, (tooth, hair, clothes, scrubbing, stove, shoe, japanned hearth, banister, plate, carpet, and dandy), tools, plated goods (warranted silver edges), snuffers, beads, musical instruments (accordions from 1_s._ to 5_s._, &c.). Then come dials and clocks, combs, optics, spectacles, eye-glasses, telescopes, opera glasses, each 10_d._ to 10_s._, China ornaments, lamps, sundries (these I give verbatim, to show the nature of the trade), crimping and goffering-machines, from 14_s._, looking-glasses, pictures, &c., beads of every kind, watch-guards, shaving-boxes, guns, pistols, powder-flasks, belts, percussion caps, &c., corkscrews, 6_d._ to 2_s._, nut-cracks, 6_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._, folding measures, each 2_s._ to 4_s._, silver spoons, haberdashery, skates per pair 2_s._ to 10_s._, carpet bags, each 3_s._ to 10_s._, egg-boilers, tapers, flat and box irons, Italian irons and heaters, earthenware jugs, metal covers, tea-pots, plaited straw baskets, sieves, wood pails, camera-obscuras, medals, amulets, perfumery and fancy soaps of all kinds, mathematical instruments, steel pens, silver and German silver patent pencil-cases and leads, snuff-boxes “in great variety,” strops, ink, slates, metal eyelet-holes and machines, padlocks, braces, belts, Congreves, lucifers, fuzees, pocket-books, bill-cases, bed-keys, and a great variety of articles too numerous to mention.
Notwithstanding the specific character and arrangement of the “Circulars with prices,” it is common enough for the swag-shop proprietors to intimate to any one likely to purchase that those prices are not altogether to be a guidance, as thirty-five per cent. discount is allowed on the amount of a ready-money purchase. One of the largest “swags” made such an allowance to a street-seller last week.
The swag-shops (of which I state the numbers in a parenthesis) are in Houndsditch (their principal locality) (23), Minories (4), Whitechapel (2), Ratcliffe-highway (20), Shoreditch (1), Long-lane, Smithfield (4), Fleet-lane (2), Holywell-street, Strand (1), Tothill-street (4), Compton-street, Soho (1), Hatton-garden (2), Clerkenwell (10), Kent-street, Borough (8), New-cut (6), Blackman-street (2), Tooley-street (3), London-road (3), Borough-road (1), Waterloo-road (4)--in all 101; but a person who had been upwards of twenty years a frequenter of these places counted up fifty others, many of them in obscure courts and alleys near Houndsditch, Ratcliffe Highway, &c., &c. These “outsiders” are generally of a smaller class than those I have described; “and I can tell you, sir,” the same man said, “some of them--ay, and some of the big ones, too--are real _swag_-shops still,--partly so, that is; you understand me, sir.” The word “swag,” I should inform my polite readers, means in slang language, “plunder.”
It may be safely calculated, then, that there are 150 swag-shops to which the different classes of street-sellers resort for the purchase of stock. Among these establishments are pot swag, stationery swag, haberdashery swag, jewellery swag, and miscellaneous swag--the latter comprise far more than half of the entire number, and constitute the warehouses which are described by their owners as “Birmingham and Sheffield,” or “English and Foreign,” or “English and German.” It is in these last-mentioned “swags” that the class I now treat of--the street-sellers of metal manufactures--find the commodities of their trade. To this, however, there is one exception. Tins for household use are not sold at the general swag-shops; but “fancy tins,” such as japanned and embellished trays, are vended there extensively. The street-sellers of this order are supplied at the “tin-shops,”--the number of the wholesale tin-men supplying the street-sellers is about fifty. The principle on which the business is conducted is precisely that of the more general swag-shop; but I shall speak of them when I treat of the street-sellers of tins.
An intelligent man, who had been employed in different capacities in some of the principal swag-shops, told me of one which had been carried on by the same family, from father to son, for more than seventy years. In the largest of the “swags” about 200 “hands” are employed, in the various capacities of salesmen, buyers, clerks, travellers, unpackers, packers, porters, &c., &c. On some mornings twenty-five large packages--some of small articles entirely--are received from the carriers. In one week, when my informant assisted in “making up the books,” the receipts were upwards of 3000_l._ “In my opinion, sir,” he said, “and it’s from an insight into the business, Mr. ----’s profit on that 3000_l._ was not less than thirty-five per cent.; for he’s a great capitalist, and pays for everything down upon the nail; that’s more than 1000_l._ profit in a week. Certainly it was an extra week, and there’s the 200 hands to pay,--but that wouldn’t range higher than 300_l._, indeed, not so high; and there’s heavy rent and taxes, and rates, no doubt, and he (the proprietor is a Jew) is a fair man to the trade, and not an uncharitable man--but he will drive a good bargain where it’s possible; so considering everything, sir, the profits must be very great, and they are mostly made out of poor buyers, who sell it to poor people in the streets, or in small shops. It’s a wonderful trade.”
From the best information I could obtain I come to the conclusion that, including small and large shops, 3000_l._ yearly is the average receipt of each--or, as it is most frequently expressed, that sum is “turned over” by the swag-shop keepers yearly. There is great competition in the trade, and much of what is called “cutting,” or one tradesman underselling another. The profit consequently varies from twenty to thirty-five and (rarely) fifty per cent. Sometimes a swag-shop proprietor is “hung-up” with a stock the demand for which has ceased, and he must dispose of it as “a job lot,” to make room for other goods, and thus is necessarily “out of pocket.” The smaller swag-shops do not “turn over” 500_l._ a year. The calculation I have given shows an outlay, yearly, of 450,000_l._ at the swag-shops of London; “but,” said a partner in one of these establishments, “what proportion of the goods find their way into the streets, what to the shops, what to the country, and what for shipping, I cannot form even a guess, for we never ask a customer for what purpose he wants the goods, though sometimes he will say, ‘I must have what is best for such or such a trade.’ Say half a million turned over in a year, sir, by the warehousemen who sell to the street-people, among others, and you’re within the mark.”
I found the street-sellers characterize the “swags” as hard and grinding men, taking every advantage “in the way of trade.” There is, too, I was told by a man lately employed in a swag-shop a constant collision of clamour and bargaining, not to say of wits, between the smarter street-sellers--the pattering class especially--and the swag-men with whom they are familiar.
The points in which the “swag-shops” resemble the “slaughter-houses,” are in the traffic in work-boxes, desks, and dressing-cases.
OF THE LIFE OF A CHEAP-JOHN.
The following narrative, relative to this curious class, who, in many respects, partake of the characteristics which I have pointed out as proper to the mountebank of old, was taken from one of the fraternity. It may be cited as an example of those who are bred to the streets:--“My father and mother,” said he, “both followed a travelling occupation, and were engaged in vending different things, from the old brimstone matches up to clothes lines, clothes props, and clothes pegs. They never got beyond these,--the other articles were thread, tapes, nutmeg graters, shoe-ties, stay-laces, and needles. My father, my mother used to tell me, was a great scholard, and had not always been a travelling vagrant. My mother had never known any other life. I, however, did not reap any benefit from my father’s scholarship. At a very early age, five or six perhaps, I recollect myself a poor little neglected wretch, sent out each day with a roll of matches, with strict injunctions not to come home without selling them, and to bring home a certain sum of money, upon pain of receiving a sound thrashing, which threat was mostly put into execution whenever I failed to perform the task imposed upon me. My father seldom worked, that is, seldom hawked, but my mother, poor thing, had to travel and work very hard to support four of us--my father, myself, and a sister, who is since dead. I was but little assistance, and sometimes when I did not bring home the sum required, she would make it up, and tell my father I had been a good boy. My father was an inveterate drinker, and a very violent temper. My mother, I am sorry to say, used to drink too, but I believe that ill-usage drove her to it. They led a dreadful life; I scarcely felt any attachment for them; home we had none, one place was as good another to us. I left my parents when scarcely eight years old. I had received a thrashing the day before for being a defaulter in my sale, and I determined the following morning to decamp; and accordingly, with my nine-pennyworth of matches (the quantity generally allotted me), I set out to begin the world upon my own account. Although this occurred 25 years ago, I have never met my parents since. My father, I heard, died a few years after my leaving, but my mother I know not whether she be living or dead. I left my parents at Dover, and journeyed on to London. I knew there were lodging-houses for travellers in every town, some of them I had stopped at with my father and mother. I told the people of these houses that my parents would arrive the following day, and paid my 2_d._ for the share of a third, fourth, fifth, or even sixth part of a bed, according to the number of children who inhabited the lodging-house upon that particular night. My matches I could always sell if I tried, but I used to play my time away, and many times night has arrived before I thought of effecting sales sufficient to pay my expenses at the beggar’s hotel. Broken victuals I got in abundance, indeed more than sufficient for my own consumption. The money I received for the matches, after paying my lodging, and purchasing a pennyworth of brimstone to make more (the wood I begged at the carpenters), I gambled away at cards. Yes, young as I was, I understood Blind Hookey. I invariably lost; of course I was cheated.
“I remained in a lodging house in Mill-lane, Deptford, for two years, discontinued the match-selling, and, having a tidy voice, took to hawking songs through the public-houses. The sailors used to ask me to sing, and there were few days that I did not accumulate 2_s._ 6_d._, and from that to 4_s._, especially when I chose to be industrious; but my love of pitch and toss and blind hookey always kept me poor. I often got into debt with my landlady, and had no difficulty in doing so, for I always felt a pride in paying. From selling the printed songs, I imbibed a wish to learn to read, and, with the assistance of an old soldier, I soon acquired sufficient knowledge to make out the names of each song, and shortly afterwards I could study a song and learn the words without any one helping me. I stopped in Deptford until I was something more than twelve years old. I had then laid the songs aside, and taken to hawking small wares, tapes, thread, &c.; and in the winter season I was a buyer of rabbit and hare skins. I kept at this for about three years, sometimes entirely without a stock. I had run it out, perhaps gambled it away; and at such times I suffered great privations. I never could beg. I have often tried, but never could. I have approached a house with a begging intention, knocked at the door, and when it has been opened I have requested a drink of water. When I was about 16 I joined in partnership with a man who used to make phosphorus boxes. I sold them for him. A piece of phosphorus was stuck in a tin tube, the match was dipped into the phosphorus, and it would ignite by friction. I was hawking these boxes in Norwich, when the constable considered they were dreadful affairs, and calculated to encourage and assist thieves and burglars. He took me before the magistrate, at the beak’s own private house, and he being equally horrified, I was sent to prison for a month. I have often thought since that the proceeding was illegal. What would be said now if a man was to be sent to jail for selling lucifer matches? In Norwich prison I associated with the rest, and if I had been inclined to turn thief I had plenty of opportunities and offers of gratuitous instruction. The separate or silent system was not in vogue then. I worked on the treadmill. Dinner was allowed to be sent in on the Sunday by the prisoner’s friends. My dinner was sent in on the first Sunday by the man I sold the boxes for, as it was on the second, third, and fourth; but I had lost it before I received it. I had always gambled it away, for there were plenty of opportunities of doing so in the prisons then. On leaving the jail I received 1_s._; with this I purchased some songs and travelled to Yarmouth. I could do best among sailors. After a few weeks I had accumulated about 8_s._, and with that sum I purchased some hardware at the swag-shop, commenced hawking, and cut the vocal department altogether; still I gambled and kept myself in poverty. In the course of time, however, I had amassed a basket of goods, worth, perhaps, 3_l._ I gambled and lost them all in one night. I was so downcast and unhappy from this circumstance, that it caused me to reflect seriously, and I made an oath that I never would gamble again. I have kept it, and have reason to bless the day that I made so good a resolution. After losing my basket of goods, the winner gave me articles amounting to a few shillings, and I began the world once more. Shortly afterwards I commenced rag gatherer, and changed my goods for old rags, of course not refusing cash in payment. My next step was to have some bills printed, whereon I requested all thrifty wives to look out their old rags or old metal, or old bones, &c.; stating at the bottom that the bill would be called for, and that a good price in ready money would be given for all useless lumber, &c. Some months at this business realized me a pretty sum of money. I was in possession of nearly 5_l._ Then I discontinued the rag-gathering; not that the trade was declining, but I did not like it--I was ambitious. I purchased a neat box, and started to sell a little Birmingham jewellery. I was now respectably dressed, was getting a living, and had entirely left off stopping at common lodging-houses; but I confined my visits to small villages--I was afraid of the law; and as I was pursuing my calling near Wakefield, a constable inquired for my hawker’s licence. I had none to produce. He took me into custody, and introduced me to a magistrate, who committed me to prison for a month, and took away my box of goods. I endured the month’s imprisonment upon the silent system; they cut my hair short; and at the expiration of the term I was thrust out upon the world heart-broken, without a shilling, to beg, to steal, or to starve.