A History of the Cries of London, Ancient and Modern

New Brooms for Old Shoes!

Old Clowze, any old Clo’, Clo’.

The familiar voice of “Old Clowze, any old Clo’ Clo,” has lasted through some generations; but the glories of Monmouth-street were unknown when a lady in a peaked bonnet and a laced stomacher went about proclaiming “Old Satin, old Taffety, or Velvet.” And a singular looking party of the Hebrew persuasion, with a cocked hat on his head, and a bundle of rapiers and sword-sticks under his arm, which he was ready to barter for:—

Old Cloaks, Suits, or Coats.

Hats or Caps—Buy, Sell, or Exchange.

While another of the tribe proclaimed aloud from east to west—and back again, “From morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve,” his willingness to “Buy, sell, or exchange Hats or Caps.” Why should the Hebrew race appear to possess a monopoly in the purchase and sale of dilapidated costumes? Why should their voices, and theirs alone, be employed in the constant iteration of the talismanic monosyllables “Old Clo’?” Is it because Judas carried the bag that all the children of Israel are to trudge through London streets to the end of their days with sack on shoulder? Artists generally represent the old clothesman with three, and sometimes four, hats, superposed one above the other. Now, although we have seen him with many hats in his hands or elsewhere, we never yet saw him with more than one hat on his head. The three-hatted clothesman, if ever he existed, is obsolete. According to Ingoldsby, however, when “Portia” pronounced the law adverse to “Shylock”:

Any Kitchen-Stuff have you Maids?

There was trading then going forward from house to house, which careful housewifery and a more vigilant police have banished from the daylight, if they have not extirpated it altogether. Before the shops are open and the chimneys send forth their smoke, there may be now, sometimes, seen creeping up an area a sly-looking beldam, who treads as stealthily as a cat. Under her cloak she has a pan, whose unctuous contents will some day assist in the enlightenment or purification of the world, in the form of candles or soap. But the good lady of the house, who is a late riser, knows not of the transformation that is going forward. In the old days she would have heard the cry of a maiden, with tub on head and pence in hand, of “Any Kitchen-stuff have you Maids?” and she probably would have dealt with her herself, or have forbidden her maids to deal.

So it is with the old cry of “Any Old Iron take Money for?” The fellow who then went openly about with sack on back was a thief, and an encourager of thieves; he now keeps a marine-store.

Any Old Iron take Money for?

Old London Shop.

Sir Walter Scott, in his Fortunes of Nigel, has left us a capital description of the shop of a London tradesman during the reign of King James in England, the shop in question being that of David Ramsay, maker of watches and horologes, within Temple-bar—a few yards eastward of St. Dunstan’s church, Fleet-street, and where his apprentice, Jenkin Vincent—abbreviated to Jin Vin, when not engaged in ’prentices-riots—is crying to every likely passer-by:—

The verbal proclaimers of the excellence of their commodities, had this advantage over those who, in the present day, use the public papers for the same purpose, that they could in many cases adapt their address to the peculiar appearance and apparent taste of the passengers. This direct and personal mode of invitation to customers became, however, a dangerous temptation to the young wags who were employed in the task of solicitation during the absence of the principal person interested in the traffic; and, confiding in their numbers and civic union, the ’prentices of London were often seduced into taking liberties with the passengers, and exercising their wit at the expense of those whom they had no hopes of converting into customers by their eloquence. If this were resented by any act of violence, the inmates of each shop were ready to pour forth in succour; and in the words of an old song which Dr. Johnson was used to hum,—

Desperate riots often arose on such occasions, especially when the Templars, or other youths connected with the aristocracy, were insulted, or conceived themselves so to be. Upon such occasions, bare steel was frequently opposed to the clubs of the citizens, and death sometimes ensued on both sides. The tardy and inefficient police of the time had no other resource than by the Alderman of the ward calling out the householders, and putting a stop to the strife by overpowering numbers, as the Capulets and Montagues are separated upon the stage.

St. Paul’s Cathedral.

It must not be imagined that these ’prentices of the City of London were of mean and humble origin. The sons of freemen of the City, or country boys of good and honourable families, alone were admitted to the seven years’ apprenticeship. The common people—the ascripti glebæ—the poor rustics who were bound to the soil, had little or no share in the fortunes of the City of London. Many of the burgesses were as proud of their descent as of their liberties.

A Street at Night—Shakespeare’s London.

Once apprenticed, and having in a few weeks imbibed the spirit of the place, the lad became a Londoner. It is one of the characteristics of London, that he who comes up to the City from the country speedily becomes penetrated with the magic of the golden pavement, and falls in love with the great City. And he who has once felt that love of London can never again be happy beyond the sound of Bow Bells, which could formerly be heard for ten miles and more. The greatness of the City, its history, its associations, its ambitions, its pride, its hurrying crowds—all these things affect the imagination and fill the heart. There is no place in the world, and never has been, which so stirs the heart of her children with love and pride as the City of London.

A year or two later on, the boy would learn, with his fellow-’prentices that he must betake himself to the practice of bow and arrow, “pellet and bolt,” with a view to what might happen. Moorfields was convenient for the volunteers of the time. There was, however, never any lack of excitement and novelty in the City of London. But this is a digression.

Amongst the earliest of the Cries of London we must class the “cry” of the City watchman; although it essentially differed from the “cries” of the shopkeepers and the hawkers; for they, as a rule, had something to exchange or sell—copen or buy? as Lydgate puts it—then the watchmen were wont to commence their “cry” at, or about, the hour of night when all others had finished for the day. After that it was the business of the watchman to make his first call, or cry after the manner inscribed over the figure here given.

He had to deal with deaf listeners, and he therefore proclaimed with a voice of command, “Lanthorn!” but a lanthorn alone was a body without a soul; and he therefore demanded “a whole candle.” To render the mandate less individually oppressive, he went on to cry, “Hang out your Lights!” And, that even the sleepers might sleep no more, he ended with “Heare!” It will be seen that he carries his staff and lanthorn with the air of honest old Dogberry about him,—“A good man and true,” and “the most desartless man to be constable.”

The making of lanthorns was a great trade in the early times. We clung to King Alfred’s invention for the preservation of light with as reverend a love, during many centuries, as we bestowed upon his civil institutions. The horn of the favoured utensil was a very dense medium for illumination, but science had substituted nothing better; and, even when progressing people carried about a neat glass instrument with a brilliant reflector, the watchman held to his ponderous and murky relic of the past, making “night hideous” with his voice, to give news of the weather, such as: “Past eleven, and a starlight night;” or “Past one o’clock, and a windy morning;” in fact, disturbed your rest to tell you “what’s o’clock.”

We are told by the chroniclers that, as early as 1416, the mayor, Sir Henry Barton, ordered lanthorns and lights to be hanged out on the winter evenings, betwixt Allhallows and Candlemass. For three centuries this practice subsisted, constantly evaded, no doubt through the avarice or poverty of individuals, sometimes probably disused altogether, but still the custom of London up to the time of Queen Anne. The cry of the watchman, “Hang out your Lights,” was an exhortation to the negligent, which probably they answered only by snores, equally indifferent to their own safety and the public preservation. A worthy mayor in the time of Queen Mary provided the watchman with a bell, with which instrument he accompanied the music of his voice down to the days of the Commonwealth. The “Statutes of the Streets,” in the time of Elizabeth, were careful enough for the preservation of silence in some things. They prescribed that, “no man shall blow any horn in the night, or whistle after the hour of nine o’clock in the night, under pain of imprisonment;” and, what was a harder thing to keep, they also forbade a man to make any “sudden outcry in the still of the night, as making any affray, or beating his wife.” Yet a privileged man was to go about knocking at doors and ringing his alarum—an intolerable nuisance if he did what he was ordered to do.

The Watch—Shakespeare’s London.

But the watchmen were, no doubt, wise in their generation. With honest Dogberry, they could not “see how sleeping should offend;” and after the watch was set, they probably agreed to “go sit upon the church bench till two, and then all to bed.”

The Bellman—from Dekker, 1608.

We have observed in our old statutes, and in the pages of authors of various kinds, that separate mention is made of the Watchman and the Bellman. No doubt there were several degrees of office in the ancient Watch and Ward system, and that part of the office of the old Watch, or Bellman, was to bless the sleepers, whose door he passed, which blessing was often sung or said in verse—hence Bellman’s verse. These verses were in many cases, the relics of the old incantations to keep off elves and hobgoblins. There is a curious work by Thomas Dekker—otherwise Decker,—entitled: “The Bellman of London. Bringing to light the most notorious Villanies that are now practised in the Kingdom, Profitable for Gentlemen, Lawyers, Merchants, Citizens, Farmers, Masters of Households and all sortes of servants to Marke, and delightful for all men to Reade, Lege, Perlege, Relege.” Printed at London for Nathaniel Butter, 1608. Where he describes the Bellman as a person of some activity—“the child of darkness; a common nightwalker; a man that had no man to wait upon him, but only a dog; one that was a disordered person, and at midnight would beat at men’s doors, bidding them (in mere mockery) to look to their candles, when they themselves were in their dead sleeps.” Stow says that in Queen Mary’s day one of each ward “began to go all night with a bell, and at every lane’s end, and at the ward’s end, gave warning of fire and candle, and to help the poor and pray for the dead.” Milton, in his “Il Penseroso,” has:—

In “A Bellman’s Song” of the same date, we have:—

Herrick, also, has given us a verse of Bellman’s poetry in one of the charming morsels of his “Hesperides:”—

But, with or without a bell, the real prosaic watchman continued to make the same demand as his predecessors for lights through a long series of years; and his demand tells us plainly that London was a city without lamps. But though he was a prosaic person, he had his own verses. He addressed himself to the “maids.” He exhorted them to make their lanthorns “bright and clear.” He told them how long their candles were expected to burn. And, finally, like a considerate lawgiver, he gave reason for his edict:—

Formerly it was the duty of the bellman of St. Sepulchre’s parish, near Newgate, to rouse the unfortunates condemned to death in that prison, the night before their execution, and solemnly exhort them to repentance with good words in bad rhyme, ending with

It was customary for the bellman to present at Christmas time to each householder in his district “A Copy of Verses,” and he expected from each in return some small gratuity. The execrable character of his poetry is indicated by the contempt with which the wits speak of “Bellman’s verses” and the comparison they bear to “Cutler’s poetry upon a knife,” whose poesy was—“Love me, and leave me not.” On this subject there is a work entitled—“The British Bellman. Printed in the year of Saint’s Fear, Anno Domini 1648, and reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany.” “The Merry Bellman’s Out-Cryes, or the Cities O Yes! being a mad merry Ditty, both Pleasant and Witty, to be cry’d in Prick-Song[3] Prose, through Country and City. Printed in the year of Bartledum Fair, 1655.” Also—“The Bell-man’s Treasury, containing above a Hundred several Verses fitted for all Humours and Fancies, and suited to all Times and Seasons. London, 1707.” It was from the riches of this “treasury” that the predecessors of the present parish Bellman mostly took their own (!) “Copy of Verses.”

In the Luttrell Collection of Broadsides (Brit. Mus.) is one dated 1683-4, entitled, “A Copy of Verses presented by Isaac Ragg, Bellman, to the Masters and Mistresses of Holbourn Division, in the Parish of St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields.” It is headed by a woodcut representing Isaac in his professional accoutrements, a pointed pole in his left hand, and in the right a bell, while his lanthorn hangs from his jacket in front; below is a series of verses, the only specimen worth giving here being the expression of Mr. Ragg’s official duty; it is as follows:—

In a similar, but unadorned broadside, dated 1666, Thomas Law, Bellman, greets his Masters of “St. Giles, Cripplegate, within the Freedom,” in twenty-three dull stanzas, of which the last may be subjoined:—

We have in our possession a “copy of verses,” coming down to our own time. It is a folio broadside, and contains in addition to a portrait of the Bellman of the Parish and his dog on their rounds, fifteen smaller cuts, mostly Scriptural. It is entitled:—

The “Verses” all contain allusions to the prominent events of the past year, and have various headings—first we have the:—

Cheap and Expeditious Printing by Steam Machinery,
executed by C. Reynell, 16, Little Pulteney Street,
Golden Square.—First printed in 1735.

There is a very rare sheet of woodcuts in the Print-room of the British Museum, containing twelve cries, with figures of the “Criers” and the cries themselves beneath. The cuts are singularly characteristic, and may be assigned with safety, on the authority of Mr. John Thomas Smith, the late keeper of the prints and drawings, as of the same date as Ben Jonson’s “fish-wives,” “costard-mongers,” and “orange women.”

No. 1 on the sheet, is the “Watch;” he has no name, but carries a staff and a lanthorn, is well secured in a good frieze gabardine, leathern-girdle, and wears a serviceable hat to guard against the weather. The worthy here depicted has a most venerable face and beard, showing how ancient was the habit of parish officers to select the poor and feeble for the office of watchman, in order to keep them out of the poor-house. The “cry” of the “watch” is as follows:—

No. 2 is the “Bellman”—Dekker’s “Bellman of London and Dog.” (as at page 49.) He carries a halberd lanthorn, and bell, and his “cry” is curious:—

No. 3 is the “Orange Woman,” a sort of full-grown Nell Gwynne, if we can only fancy Nelly, the favourite mistress of King Charles the Second, grown up in her humble occupation. She carries a basket of oranges and lemons under her arm, and seeks to sell them by the following “cry”:—

No. 4 is the “Hair-line Man,” with a bundle of lines under his arm, and a line in his hand. Clothes-pegs was, perhaps, a separate “cry.” Here is his:—

No. 5 is the “Radish and Lettuce Woman.”—Your fine “goss” lettuce is a modern cry:—

No. 6 is the man who sells “Marking Stones,” now, unless we except slate-pencils, completely out of use:—

No. 7 is the “Sausage Woman,” holding a pound of sausages in her hand:—

No. 8 is a man with “Toasting-forks and Spice-graters”:—

No. 9 is the “Broom Man,” and here we have a “cry” different from the one we have already given. He carries a pair of old boots in his hand:—

No. 10 is a woman with a box of “Wash balls”:—

No. 11 sells Ink and Pens.—He carries an ink-bottle hung by a stick behind him, and has a bunch of pens in his hand:—

The twelfth and last is a woman with a basket of Venice Glasses, such as a modern collector would give a great deal to get hold of:—

In the same collection, is a series of three plates, “Part of the Cries in London,” evidently belonging to the same set, though only one has got a title. Each plate contains thirty-six criers, with the addition of a principal “Crier” in the centre. These were evidently executed abroad, as late, perhaps, as the reign of Charles II. No. 1 (with the title page) is ornamented in the centre with the “Rat-Catcher,” carrying an emblazoned banner of rats, and attended by a boy. The leather investment of the rat-catcher of the present day is a pleasant memorial of the banner of the past. Beneath the rat-catcher, the following lines occur:—

Proving, evidently that the rat-catcher courted more to his banner than his poetry. Then follow the thirty-six cries, some of which, it will be seen, are extremely curious. The names are given beneath the cuts, but without any verse or peculiarity of cry.

“Haie ye any work for John Cooper?” is the title of one of the Martin Marprelate pamphlets. “Haie ye ani gold ends to sell?” is mentioned as a “cry,” in “Pappe with a Hatchet” (cir. 1589). “Camphires,” means Samphires. The “Alminake” man has completely gone, and “Old Dublets” has degenerated into “Ogh Clo,” a “cry” which teased Coleridge for a time, and occasioned a ludicrous incident, which we had reserved for a place somewhat later in our history, had not “Old Dublets” brought it, not inopportunely, to mind. “The other day,” said Coleridge, “I was what you would call floored by a Jew. He passed me several times crying out for old clothes, in the most nasal and extraordinary tone I ever heard. At last I was so provoked, that I said to him, ‘Pray, why can’t you say ‘old clothes’ in a plain way, as I do?’ The Jew stopped, and looking very gravely at me, said in a clear and even accent, ‘Sir, I can say ‘old clothes’ as well as you can; but if you had to say so ten times a minute, for an hour together, you would say Ogh Clo as I do now;’ and so he marched off.” Coleridge was so confounded with the justice of the retort that he followed and gave him a shilling—the only one he had.

The principal figure on the second plate is the “Bellman,” with dog, bell, halberd, and lanthorns. His “cry” is curious, though we have had it almost in the same form before, at page 56:—

The cries around him deserve transcription:—

On the third plate, the principal figure is the “Crier,” with his staff and keys:—

The figures surrounding the Common Crier are in the same style of art, and their cries characteristic of bygone times:—

The only crier in the series who has a horse and cart to attend him is the Worcestershire salt-man. Salt is still sold from carts in poor and crowded neighbourhoods.

We have been somewhat surprised in not finding a single Thames waterman among the criers of London; but the series was, perhaps, confined to the streets of London, and the watermen were thought to belong altogether to the stairs leading to their silent highway. Three of their cries have given titles to three good old English comedies, “Northward, ho!” “Eastward, ho!” and “Westward, ho!” But our series of cries is still extremely incomplete. Every thing in early times was carried and cried, and we have seen two rare prints of old London Cries not to be found in the lists already enumerated. One is called “Clove Water, Stomock Water,” and the other “Buy an new Booke.” Others may still exist. In the Duke of Devonshire’s collection of drawings, by Inigo Jones, are several cries, drawn in pen-and-ink, for the masques at court in the reigns of James I. and Charles I.

The Light of Other Days.

In Thomas Heywood’s, “The Rape of Lucrece, a True Roman Tragedy, acted by Her Majestie’s Servants at the Red-Bull, 1609,” is the following long list of London Cries, but called for the sake of the dramatic action of the scene, “Cries of Rome,” which was the common practice with the old dramatists, Rome being the canting name of London. Robert Greene, in his “Perimedes the Blacksmith, 1588,” when he wished to criticise the London Theatre at Shoreditch, talks of the Theatre in Rome; also in his “Never too Late, 1590,” when he talks of the London actors, he pretends only to speak of Roscius and the actors of Rome. In the pedlar’s French of the day Rome-vyle—or ville—was London, and Rome-mort the Queen [Elizabeth]. There is some humour in the classification, and if the cries were well imitated by the singer, the ballad—or as it would then be called “jig”—is likely to have been extremely popular in its day.

The Cries of Rome [i.e. London.]