Part 4
Among these is the sale of second-hand trays, occasionally with such things as bread-baskets. Instead of these wares, however, being matters of daily traffic, they are offered in the streets only at intervals, and generally on the Saturday and Monday evenings, while a few are hawked to public-houses. An Irishman, a rather melancholy looking man, but possessed of some humour, gave me the following account. His dress was a worn suit, such as masons work in; but I have seldom seen so coarse, and never on an Irishman of his class, except on a Sunday, so clean a shirt, and he made as free a display of it as if it were the choicest cambric. He washed it, he told me, with his own hands, as he had neither wife, nor mother, nor sister. “I was a cow-keeper’s man, your honour,” he said, “and he sent milk to Dublin. I thought I might do betthur, and I got to Liverpool, and walked here. Have I done betthur, is it? Sorry a betthur. Would I like to returren to Dublin? Well, perhaps, plaze God, I’ll do betthur here yit. I’ve sould a power of different things in the sthreets, but I’m off for counthry work now. I have a few therrays left if your honour wants such a thing. I first sould a few for a man I lodged along wid in Kent-street, when he was sick, and so I got to know the therrade. He tould me to say, and it’s the therruth, if anybody said, ‘They’re only second-hand,’ that they was all the betthur for that, for if they hadn’t been real good therrays at first, they would niver have lived to be second-hand ones. I calls the bigghur therrays butlers, and the smhaller, waithers. It’s a poor therrade. One woman’ll say, ‘Pooh! ould-fashioned things.’ ‘Will, thin, ma’am,’ I’ll say, ‘a good thing like this is niver ould-fashioned, no more than the bhutiful mate and berrid, and the bhutiful new praties a coming in, that you’ll be atin off of it, and thratin’ your husband to, God save him. No lady iver goes to supper widout her therray.’ Yes, indeed, thin, and it is a poor therrade. It’s the bhutiful therrays I’ve sould for 6_d._ I buys them of a shop which dales in sich things. The perrofit! Sorry a perrofit is there in it at all at all; but I thries to make 4_d._ out of 1_s._ If I makes 6_d._ of a night it’s good worruk.”
These trays are usually carried under the arm, and are sometimes piled on a stool or small stand, in a street market. The prices are from 2_d._ to 10_d._, sometimes 1_s._ The stronger descriptions are sold to street-sellers to display their goods upon, as much as to any other class. Women and children occasionally sell them, but it is one of the callings which seems to be disappearing from the streets. From two men, who were familiar with this and other second-hand trades, I heard the following reasons assigned for the decadence. One man thought it was owing to “swag-trays” being got up so common and so cheap, but to look “stunning well,” at least as long as the shininess lasted. The other contended that poor working people had enough to do now-a-days to get something to eat, without thinking of a tray to put it on.
If 20 persons, and that I am told is about the number of sellers, take in the one or two nights’ sale 4_s._ a week each, on second-hand trays (33 per cent. being the rate of profit), the street expenditure is 208_l._ in a year.
In other second-hand metal articles there is now and then a separate trade. Two or three sets of small _fire-irons_ may be offered in a street-market on a Saturday night; or a small stock of _flat and Italian irons_ for the laundresses, who work cheap and must buy second-hand; or a _collection of tools_ in the same way; but these are accidental sales, and are but ramifications from the general “old metal” trade that I have described. Perhaps, in the sale of these second-hand articles, 20 people may be regularly employed, and 300_l._ yearly may be taken.
In Petticoat-lane, Rosemary-lane, Whitecross-street, Ratcliff-highway, and in the street-markets generally, are to be seen men, women, and children selling _dinner knives and forks, razors, pocket-knives, and scissors_. The pocket-knives and scissors are kept well oiled, so that the weather does not rust them. These goods have been mostly repaired, ground, and polished for street-commerce. The women and children selling these articles are the wives and families of the men who repair, grind, and polish them, and who belong, correctly speaking, to the class of street-artizans, under which head they will be more
## particularly treated of. It is the same also with the street-vendors
of second-hand tin saucepans and other vessels (a trade, by the way, which is rapidly decreasing), for these are generally made of the old drums of machines retinned, or are old saucepans and pots mended for use by the vendors, who are mostly working tinmen, and appertain to the artizan class.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND LINEN, &c.
I now come to the second variety of the several kinds of street-sellers of second-hand articles. The accounts of the street-trade in second-hand linens, however, need be but brief; for none of the callings I have now to notice supply a mode of subsistence to the street-sellers independently of other pursuits. They are resorted to whenever an opportunity or a prospect of remuneration presents itself by the class of general street-sellers, women as well as men--the women being the most numerous. The sale of these articles is on the Saturday and Monday nights, in the street-markets, and daily in Petticoat and Rosemary lanes.
One of the most saleable of all the second-hand textile commodities of the streets, is an article the demand for which is certainly creditable to the poorer and the working-classes of London--_towels_. The principal supply of this street-towelling is obtained from the several barracks in and near London. They are a portion of what were the sheets (of strong linen) of the soldiers’ beds, which are periodically renewed, and the old sheeting is then sold to a contractor, of whom the street-folk buy it, and wash and prepare it for market. It is sold to the street-traders at 4_d._ per pound, 1 lb. making eight penny towels; some (inferior) is as low as 2_d._ The principal demand is by the working-classes.
“Why, for one time, sir,” said a street-seller to me, “there wasn’t much towelling in the streets, and I got a tidy lot, just when I knew it would go off, like a thief round a corner. I pitched in Whitecross-street, and not far from a woman that was making a great noise, and had a good lot of people about her, for cheap mackarel weren’t so very plenty then as they are now. ‘Here’s your cheap mack’rel,’ shouts she, ‘cheap, cheap, cheap mac-mac-mac-_mack_’rel. Then _I_ begins: ‘Here’s your cheap towelling; cheap, cheap, cheap, tow-tow-tow-_tow_-ellings. Here’s towels a penny a piece, and two for twopence, or a double family towel for twopence.’ I soon had a greater crowd than she had. O, yes! I gives ’em a good history of what I has to sell; patters, as you call it; a man that can’t isn’t fit for the streets. ‘Here’s what every wife should buy for her husband, and every husband for his wife,’ I goes on. ‘Domestic happiness is then secured. If a husband licks his wife, or a wife licks her husband, a towel is the handiest and most innocent thing it can be done with, and if it’s wet it gives you a strong clipper on the cheek, as every respectable married person knows as well as I do. A clipper that way always does me good, and I’m satisfied it does more good to a gentleman than a lady.’ Always patter for the women, sir, if you wants to sell. Yes, towels is good sale in London, but I prefer country business. I’m three times as much in the country as in town, and I’m just off to Ascot to sell cards, and do a little singing, and then I’ll perhaps take a round to Bath and Bristol, but Bath’s not what it was once.”
Another street-seller told me that, as far as his experience went, Monday night was a better time for the sale of second-hand sheetings, &c., than Saturday, as on Monday the wives of the working-classes who sought to buy cheaply what was needed for household use, usually went out to make their purchases. The Saturday-night’s mart is more one for immediate necessities, either for the Sunday’s dinner or the Sunday’s wear. It appears to me that in all these little distinctions--of which street-folk tell you, quite unconscious that they tell anything new--there is something of the history of the character of a people.
“Wrappers,” or “bale-stuff,” as it is sometimes styled, are also sold in the streets as second-hand goods. These are what have formed the covers of the packages of manufactures, and are bought (most frequently by the Jews) at the wholesale warehouses or the larger retail shops, and re-sold to the street-people, usually at 1-1/2_d._ and 2_d._ per pound. These goods are sometimes sold entire, but are far more often cut into suitable sizes for towels, strong aprons, &c. They soon get “bleached,” I was told, by washing and wear.
_“Burnt” linen or calico_ is also sold in the streets as a second-hand article. On the occasion of a fire at any tradesman’s, whose stock of drapery had been injured, the damaged wares are bought by the Jewish or other keepers of the haberdashery swag-shops. Some of these are sold by the second-hand street dealers, but the traffic for such articles is greater among the hawkers. Of this I have already given an account. The street-sale of these burnt (and sometimes _designedly_ burnt) wares is in pieces, generally from 6_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ each, or in yards, frequently at 6_d._ per yard, but of course the price varies with the quality.
I believe that no _second-hand sheets_ are sold in the streets as sheets, for when tolerably good they are received at the pawn-shops, and if indifferent, at the dolly-shops, or illegal pawn-shops. Street folk have told me of sheets being sold in the street-markets, but so rarely as merely to supply an exception. In Petticoat-lane, indeed, they are sold, but it is mostly by the Jew shopkeepers, who also expose their goods in the streets, and they are sold by them very often to street-traders, who convert them into other purposes.
The statistics of this trade present great difficulties. The second-hand linen, &c., is not a regular street traffic. It may be offered to the public 20 days or nights in a month, or not one. If a “job-lot” have been secured, the second-hand street-seller may confine himself to that especial stock. If his means compel him to offer only a paucity of second-hand goods, he may sell but one kind. Generally, however, the same man or woman trades in two, three, or more of the second-hand textile productions which I have specified, and it is hardly one street-seller out of 20, who if he have cleared his 10_s._ in a given time, by vending different articles, can tell the relative amount he cleared on each. The trade is, therefore, irregular, and is but a consequence, or--as one street-seller very well expressed it--a “tail” of other trades. For instance, if there has been a great auction of any corn-merchant’s effects, there will be more sacking than usual in the street-markets; if there have been sales, beyond the average extent, of old household furniture, there will be a more ample street stock of curtains, carpeting, fringes, &c. Of the articles I have enumerated the sale of second-hand linen, more especially that from the barrack-stores, is the largest of any.
The most intelligent man whom I met with in this trade calculated that there were 80 of these second-hand street-folk plying their trade two nights in the week; that they took 8_s._ each weekly, about half of it being profit; thus the street expenditure would be 1664_l._ per annum.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND CURTAINS.
Second-Hand Curtains, but only good ones, I was assured, can now be sold in the streets, “because common new ones can be had so cheap.” The “good second-hands,” however, sell readily. The most saleable of all second-hand curtains are those of chintz, especially old-fashioned chintz, now a scarce article; the next in demand are what were described to me as “good check,” or the blue and white cotton curtains. White dimity curtains, though now rarely seen in a street-market, are not bought to be re-used as curtains--“there’s too much washing about them for London”--but for petticoats, the covering of large pincushions, dressing-table covers, &c., and for the last-mentioned purpose they are bought by the householders of a small tenement who let a “well-furnished” bed-room or two.
The uses to which the second-hand chintz or check curtains are put, are often for “Waterloo” or “tent” beds. It is common for a single woman, struggling to “get a decent roof over her head,” or for a young couple wishing to improve their comforts in furniture, to do so piece-meal. An old bedstead of a better sort may first be purchased, and so on to the concluding “decency,” or, in the estimation of some poor persons, “dignity” of curtains. These persons are customers of the street-sellers--the second-hand curtains costing them from 8_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._
Moreen curtains have also a good sale. They are bought by working people (and by some of the dealers in second-hand furniture) for the re-covering of sofas, which had become ragged, the deficiency of stuffing being supplied with hay (which is likewise the “stuffing” of the new sofas sold by the “linen-drapers,” or “slaughter-houses”). Moreen curtains, too, are sometimes cut into pieces, for the re-covering of old horse-hair chairs, for which purpose they are sold at 3_d._ each piece.
Second-hand curtains are moreover cut into portions and sold for the hanging of the testers of bedsteads, but almost entirely for what the street-sellers call “half-teesters.” These are required for the Waterloo bedsteads, “and if it’s a nice thing, sir,” said one woman, “and perticler if it’s a chintz, and to be had for 6_d._, the women’ll fight for it.”
The second-hand curtains, when sold entire, are from 6_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ One man had lately sold a pair of “good moreens, only faded, but dyeing’s cheap,” for 3_s._ 6_d._
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND CARPETING, FLANNELS, STOCKING-LEGS, &c., &c.
I class these second-hand wares together, as they are all of woollen materials.
_Carpeting_ has a fair sale, and in the streets is vended not as an entire floor or stair-carpet, but in pieces. The floor-carpet pieces are from 2_d._ to 1_s._ each; the stair-carpet pieces are from 1_d._ to 4_d._ a yard. Hearth-rugs are very rarely offered to street-customers, but when offered are sold from 4_d._ to 1_s._ Drugget is also sold in the same way as the floor-carpeting, and sometimes for house-scouring cloths.
“I’ve sold carpet, sir,” said a woman street-seller, who called all descriptions--rugs and drugget too--by that title; “and I would like to sell it regular, but my old man--he buys everything--says it can’t be had regular. I’ve sold many things in the streets, but I’d rather sell good second-hand in carpet or curtains, or fur in winter, than anything else. They’re nicer people as buys them. It would be a good business if it was regular. Ah! indeed, in my time, and before I was married, I have sold different things in a different way; but I’d rather not talk about that, and I make no complaints, for seeing what I see. I’m not so badly off. Them as buys carpet are very particular--I’ve known them take a tape out of their pockets and measure--but they’re honourable customers. If they’re satisfied they buy, most of them does, at once; without any of your ‘is that the lowest?’ as ladies asks in shops, and that when they don’t think of buying, either. Carpet is bought by working people, and they use it for hearth-rugs, and for bed-sides, and such like. I know it by what I’ve heard them say when I’ve been selling. One Monday evening, five or six years back, I took 10_s._ 9_d._ in carpet; there had been some great sales at old houses, and a good quantity of carpet and curtains was sold in the streets. Perhaps I cleared 3_s._ 6_d._ on that 10_s._ 9_d._ But to take 4_s._ or 5_s._ is good work now, and often not more than 3_d._ in the 1_s._ profit. Still, it’s a pretty good business, when you can get a stock of second-hands of different kinds to keep you going constantly.”
What in the street-trade is known as “_Flannels_,” is for the most part second-hand blankets, which having been worn as bed furniture, and then very probably, or at the same time, used for ironing cloths, are found in the street-markets, where they are purchased for flannel petticoats for the children of the poor, or when not good enough for such use, for house cloths, at 1_d._ each.
The trade in _stocking legs_ is considerable. In these legs the feet have been cut off, further darning being impossible, and the fragment of the stocking which is worth preserving is sold to the careful housewives who attach to it a new foot. Sometimes for winter wear a new cheap sock is attached to the footless hose. These legs sell from 1/2_d._ to 3_d._ the pair, but very rarely 3_d._, and only when of the best quality, though the legs would not be saleable in the streets at all, had they not been of a good manufacture originally. Men’s hose are sold in this way more largely than women’s.
The trade in second-hand stockings is very considerable, but they form a part of the second-hand apparel of street-commerce, and I shall notice them under that head.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND BED-TICKING, SACKING, FRINGE, &c.
For _bed-ticking_ there is generally a ready sale, but I was told “not near so ready as it was a dozen year or more back.” One reason which I heard assigned for this was, that new ticking was made so cheap (being a thin common cotton, for the lining of common carpet-bags, portmanteaus, &c.), that poor persons scrupled to give any equivalent price for good sound second-hand linen bed-ticking, “though,” said a dealer, “it’ll still wear out half a dozen of their new slop rigs. I should like a few of them there slop-masters, that’s making fortins out of foolish or greedy folks, to have to live a few weeks in the streets by this sort of second-hand trade; they’d hear what was thought of them then by all sensible people, which aren’t so many as they should be by a precious long sight.”
The ticking sold in the street is bought for the patching of beds and for the making of pillows and bolsters, and for these purposes is sold in pieces at from 2_d._ to 4_d._ as the most frequent price. One woman who used to sell bed-ticking, but not lately, told me that she knew poor women who cared nothing for such convenience themselves, buy ticking to make pillows for their children.
_Second-hand Sacking_ is sold without much difficulty in the street-markets, and usually in pieces at from 2_d._ to 6_d._ This sacking has been part of a corn sack, or of the strong package in which some kinds of goods are dispatched by sea or railway. It is bought for the mending of bedstead sacking, and for the making of porters’ knots, &c.
_Second-hand Fringe_ is still in fair demand, but though cheaper than ever, does not, I am assured, “sell so well as when it was dearer.” Many of my readers will have remarked, when they have been passing the apartments occupied by the working class, that the valance fixed from the top of the window has its adornment of fringe; a blind is sometimes adorned in a similar manner, and so is the valance from the tester of a bedstead. For such uses the second-hand fringe is bought in the street-markets in pieces, sometimes called “quantities,” of from 1_d._ to 1_s._
_Second-hand Table-cloths_ used to be an article of street-traffic to some extent. If offered at all now--and one man, though he was a regular street-seller, thought he had not seen one offered in a market this year--they are worn things such as will not be taken by the pawnbrokers, while the dolly-shop people would advance no more than the table-cloth might be worth for the rag-bag. _The glazed table-covers_, now in such general use, are not as yet sold second-hand in the streets.
I was told by a street-seller that he had heard an old man (since dead), who was a buyer of second-hand goods, say that in the old times, after a great sale by auction--as at Wanstead-house (Mr. Wellesley Pole’s), about 30 years ago--the open-air trade was very brisk, as the street-sellers, like the shop-traders, proclaimed all their second-hand wares as having been bought at “the great sale.” For some years no such “_ruse_” has been practised by street-folk.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND GLASS AND CROCKERY.
These sellers are another class who are fast disappearing from the streets of London. Before glass and crockery, but more especially glass, became so low-priced when new, the second-hand glass-man was one of the most prosperous of the open-air traders; he is now so much the reverse that he must generally mix up some other calling with his original business. One man, whose address was given to me as an experienced glass-man, I found selling mackarel and “pound crabs,” and complaining bitterly that mackarel were high, and that he could make nothing out of them that week at 2_d._ each, for poor persons, he told me, would not give more. “Yes, sir,” he said, “I’ve been in most trades, besides having been a pot-boy, both boy and man, and I don’t like this fish-trade at all. I could get a pot-boy’s place again, but I’m not so strong as I were, and it’s slavish work in the place I could get; and a man that’s not so young as he was once is chaffed so by the young lads and fellows in the tap-room and the skittle-ground. For this last three year or more I had to do something in addition to my glass for a crust. Before I dropped it as a bad consarn, I sold old shoes as well as old glass, and made both ends meet that way, a leather end and a glass end. I sold off my glass to a rag and bottle shop for 9_s._, far less than it were worth, and I swopped my shoes for my fish-stall, and water-tub, and 3_s._ in money. I’ll be out of this trade before long. The glass was good once; I’ve made my 15_s._ and 20_s._ a week at it: I don’t know how long that is ago, but it’s a good long time. Latterly I could do no business at all in it, or hardly any. The old shoes was middling, because they’re a free-selling thing, but somehow it seems awkward mixing up any other trade with your glass.”