A History of the Cries of London, Ancient and Modern

The “tink, terry tink” of the Tinker’s “Cry” is preserved in a Miscellany of the year 1667, called “Catch that Catch Can; or, the Musical Champion.”

“The Tinker.

The tinker’s “Cry” forms the opening lines of “Clout the Cauldron,” one of the best of our old Scottish songs:—

But the song is so well known to all who take an interest in our northern minstrelsy, and is to be found, moreover, in every good collection of Scottish Songs, that it is enough to refer to it.

Honest John Bunyan was a travelling tinker originally. Reader! just for a moment fancy the inspired author—poet we may call him—of “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” crying the “cry” of his trade through the streets of Bedford, thus—“Mistress, have you any work for the tinker? pots, pans, kettles I mend, old brass, lead or old copper I buy. Anything in my way to-day, maids?” While at the same time, through his brain was floating visions of Vanity Fair, the Holy War, the Slough of Despond, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the Barren Fig Tree, the Water of Life, &c. beneath the long head of hair, shaggy and dirty, too, as a tinker’s generally is.

Hot Codlings:—A Catch.

This will be found in “Windsor Drollery,” and, with music for three voices, by Thomas Holmes, in John Hilton’s “Catch that Catch Can;” and also Walsh’s “Catch Club.” Part II., p. 25.

The best known collection of cries is “The Cryes of the City of London. Drawne after the Life. P. Tempest, Excudit,” a small folio volume, which when published, in 1688, consisted of only fifty plates, as the following advertisement, extracted from the London Gazette of May 28-31, 1688, sufficiently proves:—

Samuel Pepys, the eccentric diarist, who died 1703, left to Magdalene College, Cambridge, an invaluable collection of ballads, manuscript naval memoirs, ancient English poetry, three volumes of “Penny Merriments,” and a numerous assemblage of etchings and engravings. Among the latter are a number of Tempest’s Cries in the first state. These are still preserved in the Pepysian Library in the same College.

In 1711 another edition of Tempest’s Cries was published, containing seventy-four plates, several of which can scarcely be called cries. They are popular “London Characters” rather than “criers.” As the book, however, is extremely rare, and consequently costly, and as a history of the old London Cries would be very imperfect without a particular account of Tempest’s volume being made, with a few words about Mauron, who designed, and Pearce Tempest, who engraved these cries, that which follows will not, we trust, be altogether out of place. Of Mauron, we can find no better account than the notice in Walpole.

“Marcellus Mauron—sometimes spelt Lauron, was born at the Hague in 1643, and learnt to paint of his father, with whom he came when young into England. Here he was placed with one La Zoon, a portrait-painter, and then with Flesshier, but owed his chief improvement to his own application. He lived several years in Yorkshire, and when he returned again to London he had very much improved himself in his art. He drew correctly, studied nature diligently, copied closely, and so surpassed all his contemporaries in drapery, that Sir Godfrey Kneller employed him to clothe his portraits. He likewise excelled in imitating the different styles of eminent masters, executed conversation pieces of considerable merit. Several prints were made from his works, and several plates he etched and scraped himself. A book on fencing, and the procession at the coronation of William and Mary, were designed by him. He lived in Bow-street, Covent-garden, on the west side, about three doors up, and at the back of Sir Godfrey Kneller’s house in the Piazza; there he died of consumption March 11th, 1702.”

Of Pearce Tempest, the engraver, the particulars collected by Vertue were so extremely slight that Horace Walpole merely enumerates him among those of whom nothing is known. It may be told of him, however, that he lived in the Strand, over-against Somerset House, and dying in 1717, was buried on the 14th of April, in the church-yard of St. Paul, Covent-garden.

The six woodcuts following are reduced copies of the engraved figures that appear in Marcellus Mauron cum Tempest’s “The Cryes of the City of London;” first we have:—

Fine Writing Ink!

This engraving pretty well describes the occupation of the figure represented. He carries a barrel on his back—pens in his right hand, with a pint measure and funnel at his side. But since Mauron’s time the cry of “Fine Writing Ink” has ceased to be heard in the streets of the metropolis, so we no longer hear:—

Buy an Iron Fork, or a Shovel?

The demand for such an iron fork, or such a shovel as the old woman carries is now discontinued.

Troop, Every One, One!

The man blowing a trumpet, “Troop, every one, one!” was a street seller of hobby-horses—toys for children of three hundred years ago.

He carried them, as represented in the engraving, in a partitioned frame, on his shoulder, and to each horse’s head was a small flag with two bells attached. It was a pretty plaything for a “little master,” and helped him to imitate the galloping of the real and larger hobby-horse in the pageants and mummeries that passed along the streets, or pranced in the shows at fairs and on the stage. Now-a-days we give a boy the first stick at hand to thrust between his legs as a Bucephalus—the shadow of a shadow—or the good natured grandpapa wishing to give my “young master” something of the semblance of the generous animal—for the horse is no less popular with boys than formerly, takes his charge to the nearest toyshop and buys him a painted stick on which is a sawn-out representation of a horse’s head, which with the addition of a whip will enable him to:—

Buy a Fine Singing Bird!

The cries of singing birds are extinct; we have only bird-sellers. The above engraving, therefore represents a by-gone character.

Strawberries Ripe, and Cherries in the Rise.

In the earlier days, the above was at once a musical and a poetical cry. It must have come over the ear, telling of sunny gardens not a sparrow’s flight from the City, such as that of the Bishop of Ely in Holborn, and of plenteous orchards which could spare their boughs as well as their fruit:—

Fine Oranges and Lemons.

The “orange-women” of Ben Jonson we have figured to the life. The familiar mention of the orange-sellers in the “Silent Woman,” and this very early representation of one of them, show how general the use of this fruit had become in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is stated, though the story is somewhat apocryphal, that the first oranges were imported by Sir Walter Raleigh. It is probable that about his time they first became an article of general commerce. We now consume about three hundred and fifty millions of oranges every year.

The class of bold young women—“Orange Wenches,” that Nell Gwynne made famous is sufficiently alluded to in a passage in the Spectator, No. 141:

Rowe and other writers go far to prove that the “Orange Wenches” who frequented theatres had

beside supplying refreshment to the young gallants of the day.

In Douglas Jerrold’s comedy of “Nell Gwynne,” which was first represented at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 9th of January, 1833, with the following cast of characters:—

There is the following scene and song:—

The orange-woman who carried the golden fruit through every street and alley, with the musical cry of:—“Fine Oranges and Lemons,” lasted for a century or two. Then the orange-woman became, as everything else became, a more prosaic person as she approached our own times. She was a barrow-woman at the end of the last century: and Porson has thus described her:—

The transformation was the same with the strawberry and cherry-women.

From the “Collection of Ancient Songs and Ballads, written on various subjects, and printed between the years MDLX. and MDCC.” in the British Museum, and now known as the Roxburghe Ballads, we take the ballad of:—

THE CRIES OF LONDON.

Tune—The Merry Christ-church Bells.

Printed and sold at the Printing-office in Bow-church-yard, London.

“Holloway cheese-cakes” was once one of the London cries; they were sold by a man on horseback; and in “Jack Drum’s Entertainment,” a Comedy, 1601, in a random song, the festive character of this district is denoted:—

Drunken Barnaby, at the “Mother Red Cap,” at Holloway, found very bad company:—

Addison, the essayist and poet, 1672-1719, contributed a capital paper to the Spectator, on the subject of London Cries, which we deem so much to the purpose, that it is here reproduced in extenso.

There is nothing which more astonishes a foreigner, and frightens a country ’squire, than the cries of London. My good friend Sir Roger often declares that he cannot get them out of his head, or go to sleep for them, the first week that he is in town. On the contrary, Will Honeycombe calls them the Ramage de la ville, and prefers them to the sound of larks, and nightingales, with all the music of the fields and woods. I have lately received a letter from some very odd fellow upon this subject, which I shall leave with my reader, without saying anything further of it.

SIR,

I am a man out of all business, and would willingly turn my head to anything for an honest livelihood. I have invented several projects for raising many millions of money without burdening the subject, but I cannot get the parliament to listen to me, who look upon me forsooth as a crack, and a projector; so that despairing to enrich either myself or my country by this public-spiritedness, I would make some proposals to you relating to a design which I have very much at heart, and which may procure me a handsome subsistence, if you will be pleased to recommend it to the cities of London and Westminster.

The post I would aim at, is to be comptroller-general of the London cries, which are at present under no manner of rules or discipline. I think I am pretty well qualified for this place, as being a man of very strong lungs, of great insight into all the branches of our British trades and manufactures, and of a competent skill in music.

The cries of London may be divided into vocal and instrumental. A freeman of London has the privilege of disturbing a whole street for an hour together with the twankling of a brass kettle or a frying-pan. The watchman’s thump at midnight startles us in our beds, as much as the breaking in of a thief. The sow-gelder’s horn has indeed something musical in it, but this is seldom heard within the liberties. I would therefore propose that no instrument of this nature should be made use of, which I have not tuned and licensed, after having carefully examined in what manner it may affect the ears of her majesty’s liege subjects.

Vocal cries are of a much larger extent, and indeed so full of incongruities and barbarisms, that we appear a distracted city to foreigners, who do not comprehend the meaning of such enormous outcries. Milk is generally sold in a note above Ela, and it sounds so exceedingly shrill, that it often sets our teeth on edge. The chimney-sweeper is confined to no certain pitch; he sometimes utters himself in the deepest bass, and sometimes in the sharpest treble; sometimes in the highest, and sometimes in the lowest note of the gamut. The same observation might be made on the retailers of small coal, not to mention broken glasses or brick-dust. In these therefore, and the like cases, it should be my care to sweeten and mellow the voices of these itinerant tradesmen, before they make their appearance in our streets, as also to accommodate their cries to their respective wares; and to take care in particular, that those may not make the most noise who have the least to sell, which is very observable in the venders of card matches, to whom I cannot but apply that old proverb of Much cry, but little wool.

Some of these last mentioned musicians are so very loud in the sale of these trifling manufactures, that an honest splenetic gentleman of my acquaintance bargained with one of them never to come into the street where he lived; but what was the effect of this contract? Why, the whole tribe of card-match-makers which frequent that quarter, passed by his door the very next day, in hopes of being bought off after the same manner.

It is another great imperfection in our London-cries, that there is no just time nor measure observed in them. Our news should indeed be published in a very quick time, because it is a commodity that will not keep cold. It should not, however, be cried with the same precipitation as fire; yet this is generally the case: a bloody battle arms the town from one end to another in an instant. Every motion of the French is published in so great a hurry, that one would think the enemy were at our gates. This likewise I would take upon me to regulate in such a manner, that there should be some distinction made between the spreading of a victory, a march, or an encampment, a Dutch, a Portugal, or a Spanish mail. Nor must I omit, under this head, those excessive alarms with which several boisterous rustics infest our streets in turnip-season; and which are more inexcusable, because these are wares which are in no danger of cooling upon their hands.

There are others who affect a very slow time, and are, in my opinion, much more tunable than the former; the cooper in particular swells his last note in a hollow voice, that is not without its harmony; nor can I forbear being inspired with a most agreeable melancholy, when I hear that sad and solemn air with which the public are very often asked, If they have any chairs to mend? Your own memory may suggest to you many other lamentable ditties of the same nature, in which music is wonderfully languishing and melodious.

I am always pleased with that particular time of the year which is proper for the pickling of dill and cucumbers; but alas! this cry, like the song of the nightingale, is not heard above two months. It would therefore be worth while to consider, whether the same air might not in some cases be adapted to other words.

It might likewise deserve our most serious consideration, how far, in a well-regulated city, those humourists are to be tolerated, who, not content with the traditional cries of their forefathers, have invented particular songs and tunes of their own: such as was not many years since, the pastry-man, commonly known by the name of the Colly-Molly-Puff; and such as is at this day the vender of powder and wash-ball, who, if I am rightly informed, goes under the name of Powder-Watt.

Colly-Molly-Puff.

I must not here omit one particular absurdity which runs through this whole vociferous generation, and which renders their cries very often not only incommodious, but altogether useless to the public; I mean that idle accomplishment which they all of them aim at, of crying so as not to be understood. Whether or no they have learned this from several of our affected singers, I will not take upon me to say; but most certain it is, that people know the wares they deal in rather by their tunes than by their words: insomuch that I have sometimes seen a country boy run out to buy apples of a bellows-mender, and ginger-bread from a grinder of knives and scissors. Nay, so strangely infatuated are some very eminent artists of this particular grace in a cry, that none but their acquaintance are able to guess at their profession; for who else can know, that work if I had it, should be the signification of a corn-cutter.

Forasmuch, therefore, as persons of this rank are seldom men of genius or capacity, I think it would be very proper, that some man of good sense and sound judgment should preside over these public cries, who should permit none to lift up their voices in our streets, that have not tunable throats, and are not only able to overcome the noise of the crowd, and the rattling of coaches, but also to vend their respective merchandises in apt phrases, and in the most distinct and agreeable sounds. I do therefore humbly recommend myself as a person rightly qualified for this post; and if I meet with fitting encouragement, shall communicate some other projects which I have by me, that may no less conduce to the emolument of the public.

I am,
Sir, &c.
Ralph Crotchet.

A curious parallel might be carried out between the itinerant occupations which the progress of society has entirely superseded, and those which even the most advanced civilization is compelled to retain. We here only hastily glance at a few of these differences.

Of the street trades which are past and forgotten, the small-coal-man was one of the most remarkable. He tells the tale of a city with few fires; for who could now imagine a man earning a living by bawling “Small Coals” from door to door, without any supply but that in the sack which he carries on his shoulders? His cry had, however, a rival in that of “Any Wood to cleave.”

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But here we must pause awhile to make a passing remark—even if it be no more than a mere wayside nod to the memory of Thomas Britton, the celebrated “Musical Small Coal Man,”—1654-1714.—to whom Britain is greatly indebted for the introduction and cultivation of concerted music, and whose influence has been indirectly felt in musical circles throughout the world:—

This singular man had a small coal shop at the corner of a passage in Aylesbury-street, Clerkenwell-green, and his concert-room! which was over that, could only be reached by stairs from the outside of the house. The facetious Ned Ward, confirms this statement, thus:—

Thomas Britton,
The Musical Small Coal Man.

Britton was buried in the church-yard of Clerkenwell, being attended to the grave by a great concourse of people, especially by those who had been used to frequent his concerts.

To resume our argument, we may ask what chance would an aged man now have with his flattering solicitation of “Pretty Pins, pretty Women?” and the musical distich:—

Every stationer’s or general-shop can now supply all the “Fine Writing-ink,” wanted either by clerks or authors. There is a grocer’s shop, or co-operative store at every turn; and who therefore needs him who cried aloud “Lilly white Vinegar, three-pence a quart?” When everybody, old and young, wore wigs—when the price for a common one was a guinea, and a journeyman had a new one every year; when it was an article in every city apprentice’s indenture that his master should find him in “One good and sufficent wig, yearly, and every year, for, and during, and unto the expiration of the full end and term of his apprenticeship”—then, a wig-seller made his stand in the street, or called from door to door, and talked of a “Fine Tie, or a fine Bob-wig sir?” Formerly, women cried “Four pair for a shilling, Holland Socks,” also “Long Thread Laces, long and strong,” “Scotch or Russian Cloth,” “Buy any Wafers or Wax.” “London’s Gazette, here?” The history of cries is a history of social changes. Many of the working trades, as well as the vendors of things that can be bought in every shop, are now nearly banished from our thoroughfares. “Old Chairs to mend,” or “A brass Pot or an iron Pot to mend?” still salutes us in some retired suburb; and we still see the knife-grinder’s wheel; but who vociferates “Any work for John Cooper?” The trades are gone to those who pay scot and lot. What should we think of prison discipline, now-a-days, if the voice of lamentation was heard in every street, “Some Bread and Meat for the poor Prisoners; for the Lord’s sake, pity the Poor?” John Howard put down this cry. Or what should we say of the vigilance of excise-officers if the cry of “Aqua Vitæ” met our ears? The Chiropodist has now his guinea, a country villa, and railway season ticket; in the old days he stood at corners, with knife and scissors in hand, crying “Corns to pick.” There are some occupations of the streets, however, which remain essentially the same, though the form be somewhat varied. The sellers of food are of course among these. “Hot Peascod,” and “Hot Sheep’s-feet,” are not popular delicacies, as in the time of Lydgate. “Hot Wardens,” and “Hot Codlings,” are not the cries which invite us to taste of stewed pears and baked apples. But we have still apples hissing over a charcoal fire; also roasted chesnuts, and potatoes steaming in a shining apparatus, with savoury salt-butter to put between the “fruit” when cut; the London pieman still holds his ground in spite of the many penny pie-shops now established. Rice-milk is yet sold out in halfpennyworths. But furmety, barley broth, greasy sausages—“bags of mystery,” redolent of onions and marjoram—crisp brown flounders, and saloop are no longer in request.

The cry of “Water-cresses” used to be heard from some barefoot nymph of the brook, who at sunrise had dipped her foot into the bubbling runnel, to carry the green luxury to the citizens’ breakfast-tables. Water-cresses are now cultivated, like cabbages, in market-gardens. The cry of “Rosemary and Briar” once resounded through the throughfares; and every alley smelt “like Bucklersbury in simple time,” when the whole street was a mart for odoriferous herbs. Cries like these are rare enough now; yet we do hear them occasionally, when crossing some bye-street, and have then smelt an unwonted fragrance in the air; and as someone has truly said that scents call up the most vivid associations, we have had visions of a fair garden afar off, and the sports of childhood, and the song of the lark that:—

Then comes a pale-looking woman with little bunches in her hand, who, with a feeble voice, cries “Buy my sweet Briar, any Rosemary?” There are still, however, plenty of saucy wenches—of doubtful morality—in the more crowded and fashionable thoroughfares, who present the passengers with moss-roses, and violets. Gay tells us:—

We no longer hear the cries which had some association of harmonious sounds with fragrant flowers. The din of “noiseful gain” exterminated them.