During the summer months milk is sold in Smithfield, Billingsgate, and the other markets, and on Sundays in Battersea-fields, Clapham-common, Camberwell-green, Hampstead-heath, and similar places. About twenty men are engaged in this sale. They usually wear a smock frock, and have the cans and yoke used by the regular milk-sellers; they are not itinerant. The skim milk—for they sell none else—is purchased at the dairies at 1½d. a quart, and even the skim milk is also further watered by the street-sellers. Their cry is “Half-penny half-pint! Milk!” The tin measure however in which the milk-and-water is served is generally a “slang,” and contains but half of the quantity proclaimed. The purchasers are chiefly boys and children; rarely men, and never costermongers, I was told, “for they reckon milk sickly.” These street-sellers—who have most of them been employed in the more regular milk-trade—clear about 1s. 6d. a day each, for three months; and as the profit is rather more than cent. per cent. it appears that about 4,000 gallons of milk are thus sold, and upwards of 260l. laid out upon these persons, yearly in its purchase.
A pair of cans with the yoke cost 15s., and 1l. is amply sufficient as capital to start in this trade, as the two measures used may be bought for 2s.; and 3s. can be devoted to the purchase of the liquid.
The preparations of milk which comprise the street-trade, are curds and whey and rice-milk, the oldest street-sellers stating that these were a portion of the trade in their childhood. The one is a summer, and the other a winter traffic, and both are exclusively in the hands of the same middle-aged and elderly women. The vendors prepare the curds and whey in all cases themselves. “Skim-milk,” purchased at the dairies, is used by the street-purveyors, a gallon being the quantity usually prepared at a time. This milk gallon is double the usual quantity, or eight quarts. The milk is first “scalded,” the pan containing it being closely watched, in order that the contents may not boil. The scalding occupies 10 or 15 minutes, and it is then “cooled” until it attains the lukewarmness of new milk. Half a pound of sugar is then dissolved in the milk, and a tea-spoonful of rennet is introduced, which is sufficient to “turn” a gallon. In an hour, or in some cases two, the milk is curded, and is ready for use. The street-sale is confined to stalls; the stall, which is the ordinary stand, being covered with a white cloth, or in some cases an oil-cloth, and on this the curds, in a bright tin kettle or pan, are deposited. There are six mugs on the board, and a spoon in each, but those who affect a more modern style have glasses. One of the neatest stalls, as regards the display of glass, and the bright cleanliness of the vessel containing the curds, is in Holborn; but the curd-seller there has only an average business. The mugs or glasses hold about the third of a pint, and “the full of one” is a penny-worth; for a halfpenny-worth the vessel is half filled. The season is during the height of summer, and continues three or four months, or, as one woman tersely and commercially expressed it, “from Easter to fruit.” The number of street-saleswomen is about 100. Along with the curds they generally sell oranges, or such early fruit as cherries.
A woman who had sold “cruds”—as the street-people usually call it—for eighteen years, gave me the following account:—“Boys and girls is my best customers for cruds, sir. Perhaps I sell to them almost half of all I get rid of. Very little fellows will treat girls, often bigger than themselves, at my stall, and they have as much chaffing and nonsense about it’s being ‘stunning good for the teeth,’ and such like, as if they was grown-up. Some don’t much like it at first, but they gets to like it. One boy, whose young woman made faces at it—and it was a little sour to be sure that morning—got quite vexed and said, ‘Wot a image you’re a-making on yourself!’ I don’t know what sort the boys are, only that they’re the street-boys mostly. Quiet working people are my other customers, perhaps rather more women than men. Some has told me they was teetotallers. Then there’s the women of the town of the poorer sort, they’re good customers,—as indeed I think they are for most cooling drinks at times, for they seem to me to be always thirsty. I never sell to dustmen or that sort of people. Saturday is my best day. If it’s fine and warm, I sell a gallon then, which makes about 40 penn’orths; sometimes it brings me 3s., sometimes 3s. 6d.; it’s rather more than half profits. Take it altogether, I sell five gallons in fine dry weeks, and half that in wet; and perhaps there’s what I call a set down wet week for every two dry. Nobody has a better right to pray against wet weather than poor women like me. Ten years ago I sold almost twice as much as I can now. There’s so many more of us at present, I think, and let alone that there’s more shops keeps it too.”
Another old woman told me, that she used, “when days was longest,” to be up all night, and sell her “cruds” near Drury-lane theatre, and often received in a few hours 5s. or 6s., from “ladies and gentlemen out at night.” But the men were so rackety, she said, and she’d had her stall so often kicked over by drunken people, and no help for it, that she gave up the night-trade, and she believed it was hardly ever followed now.
To start in the curds and whey line requires the following capital:—Saucepan, for the scalding and boiling, 2s.; stall, 5s.; 6 mugs, 6d.; or 6 glasses, 2s. 6d.; 6 spoons, 3d.; tin kettle on stall, 3s. 6d.; pail for water to rinse glasses, 1s. Then for stock-money: 1 gallon skimmed milk, 1s. 6d. or 1s. 8d.; and ½ lb. sugar, 2d. In all, 14s. 1d., reckoning the materials to be of the better sort.
Of the whole number of street curd-sellers, 50 dispose of as much as my informant, or 12½ gallons in 3 weeks; the other 50 sell only half as much. Taking the season at 3 months, we find the consumption of curds and whey in the street to be 2,812 double gallons (as regards the ingredient of milk), at a cost to the purchasers of 421l., half of which is the profit accruing to the street-seller. The receipts of those having the better description of business being 9s. 4d. weekly; those of the smaller traders being 4s. 8d. There is a slight and occasional loss by the “cruds” being kept until unsaleable, in which case they are “fit for nothing but the hog-wash man.”
To make rice-milk, the street-seller usually boils four quarts, of the regular measure, of “skim” with one pound of rice, which has been previously boiled in water. An hour suffices for the boiling of the milk; and the addition of the rice, swollen by the boiling water, increases the quantity to six quarts. No other process is observed, except that some sweeten their rice-milk before they offer it for sale; the majority, however, sweeten it to the customer’s liking when he is “served,” unless—to use the words of one informant—“he have a werry, werry sweet tooth indeed, sir; and that can’t be stood.” For the sweetening of six quarts, half a pound of sugar is used; for the “spicing,” half an ounce of allspice, dashed over the milk freely enough from a pepper-castor. Rice-milk is always sold at stalls arranged for the purpose, and is kept in a tin pan fitted upon a charcoal brazier, so that the “drinkable” is always hot. This apparatus generally stands on the ground alongside the stall, and is elevated only by the feet of the brazier. The “rice-milk woman,”—for the street-sellers are generally females,—dips a large breakfast-cup, holding half a pint, into the pan, puts a tea-spoonful of sugar into it, browns the whole with allspice, and receives 1d.; a halfpennyworth is, of course, half the quantity. The rice-milk women are also sellers of oranges, chestnuts, apples, or some other fruit, as well as the rice-milk; but, sometimes, when the weather is very cold and frosty, they sell rice-milk alone. There are fifty street-sellers of rice-milk in London. Saturday night is the best time of sale, when it is not uncommon for a rice-milk woman to sell six quarts; but, in a good trade, four quarts a day for six days of the week is an average. The purchasers are poor people; and a fourth of the milk is sold to boys and girls, to whom it is often a meal. “Ah, sir,” said one woman, “you should have seen how a poor man, last winter, swallowed a penn’orth. He’d been a-wandering all night, he said, and he looked it, and a gentleman gave him 2d., for he took pity on his hungry look, and he spent 1d. with me, and I gave him another cup for charity. ‘God bless the gentleman and you!’ says he, ‘it’s saved my life; if I’d bought a penny loaf, I’d have choked on it.’ He wasn’t a beggar, for I never saw him before, and I’ve never seen him again from that day to this.” The same informant told me, that she believed no rice-milk was bought by the women of the town: “it didn’t suit the likes of them.” Neither is it bought by those who are engaged in noisome trades. If there be any of the rice-milk left at night, and the saleswoman have doubts of its “keeping,” it is re-boiled with fresh rice and milk. The profit is considerable; for the ingredients, which cost less than 1s. 6d., are made into 96 pennyworths, and so to realize 8s. In some of the poorer localities, however, such as Rosemary-lane, only ½d. the half-pint can be obtained, and 4s. is then the amount received for six quarts, instead of 8s.
To start “in rice-milk” requires 13s. capital, which includes a pan for boiling the milk, 2s.; a kettle, with brazier, for stall, 4s.; stall or stand, 5s.; six cups, 9d.; for stock-money 15½d., with which is bought 4 quarts of skim-milk, 9d.; 1 lb. of rice, 3d.; ½ lb. of sugar, 2d.; allspice, 1d.
The season continues for four months; and calculating—a calculation within the mark—that one half of the 50 sellers have as good a trade as my informant—24 quarts weekly—and that, of the remaining 25, one half sell 12 quarts each weekly, at 1d. the half-pint, and the other half vend 24 quarts at ½d. the half-pint, we find that 320l. is annually spent in rice-milk and about 3,000 gallons of it yearly consumed in the streets of London.
It may surprise many to learn that there are still existing water-carriers in London, and some of them depending upon the trade for a livelihood; while others, the “odd men” of the neighbourhood, carry pails of spring water to the publicans or eating-house keepers, who may not have servants to send to the nearest pump for it, and who require it fresh and cool for those who drink it at their meals. Of these men there are, as near as I can ascertain, from 100 to 150; their charge is 1d. per pail. Their earnings per day 6d. to 1s. Perhaps none of them depend solely upon this labour for their support.
It is otherwise at Highgate and Hampstead, for in those places both men and women depend entirely for their daily bread on water carrying. At Hampstead the supply is derived from what may be called a double well, known as “the Conduit.” The ground is flagged, and the water is seen at each corner of a wall built to the surface of the ground (about eight feet) and surmounted by an iron rail. The water is covered over, in one corner and not in the other, and the carrier descends a step or two, dips in his pails and walks away with them when filled. The water is carried by means of a “yoke,” in the same way as we see the milk-pails carried in every street in London. The well and the field in which the Hampstead water is situated are the property of the Church, and the water is free to any one, in any quantity, either for sale or any other purpose, “without leave.” In droughts or frosts the supply fails, and the carriers have sometimes to wait hours for their “turn,” and then to bale the water into their pails with a basin. The nearest street to which the water is carried is half a mile distant. Some is carried three quarters of a mile, and some (occasionally) a mile. The two pails full, which contain seven gallons, are sold at 1½d. The weight is about 70 lbs. Seventeen years ago the price was 3d.; after which it fell to 2½d., then to 2d., and has been 1½d. these five or six years, while now there are three or four carriers who even “carry” at two pails a-penny to the nearer places. The supply of the well (apart from drought or frost) is fifty-six gallons an hour. The principal customers are the laundresses; but in wet weather their cisterns and water-tubs are filled, and the carriers, or the major part of them, are idle. The average earnings of the carriers are 5s. a week the year through. Two of them are men of seventy. There is a bench about midway to Hampstead, at which these labourers rest; and here on almost every fine day sits with them a palsied old soldier, a pensioner of about eighty, who regales them, almost daily, with long tales of Vinegar Hill, and Jemmy O’Brien (the informer), and all the terrors of the terrible times of the Irish rebellion of 1798; for the old man (himself an Irishman) had served through the whole of it. This appears to be a somewhat curious theme for constant expatiation to a band of London water-carriers.
There are now twenty individuals, fourteen men and six women, carrying at Hampstead, and twice that number at Highgate. Some leave the carrying when they get better work,—but three-fourths of the number live by it entirely. The women are the wives and widows of carriers. The men have been either mechanics or labourers, except six or eight youths (my informant was not certain which) who had been “brought up to the water, but would willingly get away from it if they could.”
A well-spoken and intelligent-looking man, dressed in thick fustian, old and greasy, “but good enough for the carrying,” gave me the following account.
“I was a copper-plate printer,” he said, “and twenty years ago could earn my 25s. a week. But employment fell off. The lithographic injured it, and at last I could get very little work, and then none at all, so I have been carrying now between three and four years. My father-in-law was in the trade, and that made me think of it. My best day’s work, and it’s the same with all, is 2s., which is sixteen turns. It’s not possible to do more. If that could be done every day it would be very well, but in wet weather when the laundresses, who are my customers, don’t want water, I can’t make 1s. a week. Then in a drought or a frost one has to wait such a long time for his turn, that it’s not 6d. a day; a dry spring’s the worst. Last March I had many days to wait six turns, and it takes well on to an hour for a turn then. We sit by the well and talk when we’re waiting. O, yes, sir, the Pope has had his turn of talk. There’s water companies both at Hampstead and Highgate, but our well water (Hampstead) is asked for, for all that. It’s so with Highgate. It is beautiful water, either for washing or drinking. Perhaps it’s better with a little drop of spirit for drinking, but I seldom taste it that way. The fatigue’s so great that we must take a little drop of spirit on a long day. No, sir, we don’t mix it; that spoils two good things. I’ve been at the well first light in the morning, and in summer I’ve been at work at it all night. There’s no rule among us, but it’s understood that every one has his turn. There’s a little chaff sometimes, and some get angry at having to wait, but I never knew a fight. I have a wife and three children. She works for a laundress, and has 2s. 6d. a day. She has two days regular every week, and sometimes odd turns as well. I think that the women earn more than the men in Hampstead. My rent is 1s. 6d. a week for an unfurnished room. There is no trade on Sundays, but on fine summer Sundays old —— attends at the well and sells glasses of cool water. He gets 2s. 6d. some days. He makes no charge; just what any one pleases to give. Any body might do it, but the old gentleman would grumble that they were taking his post.”
Computing the number of water carriers at the two places at sixty, and their average earnings through the year at 5s. a week, it appears that these men receive 780l. yearly. The capital required to start in the business is 9s., the cost of a pair of pails and a yoke.
The old man who sells water on the summer Sunday mornings, generally leaving off his sale at church-time, told me that his best customers were ladies and gentlemen who loved an early walk, and bought of him “as it looked like a bit of country life,” he supposed, more than from being thirsty. When such customers were not inhabitants of the neighbourhood, they came to him to ask their way, or to make inquiries concerning the localities. Sometimes he dispensed water to men who “looked as if they had been on the loose all night.” “One gentleman,” he said, “looks sharp about him, and puts a dark-coloured stuff—very likely it’s brandy—into the two or three glasses of water which he drinks every Sunday, or which he used to drink rather, for I missed him all last summer, I think. His hand trembled like a aspen; he mostly gave me 6d.” The water-seller spoke with some indignation of boys, and sometimes men, going to the well on a Sunday morning and “drinking out of their own tins that they’d taken with ’em.”
The cooked provisions sold in the streets, it has been before stated, consist of three kinds—solids, liquids, and pastry and confectionary. The two first have now been fully described, but the last still remains to be set forth.
The street pastry may be best characterised as of a strong flavour. This is, for the most part, attributable to the use of old or rancid butter,—possessing the all-important recommendation of cheapness,—or to the substitution of lard, dripping, or some congenial substance. The “strong” taste, however, appears to possess its value in the estimation of street pastry-buyers, especially among the boys. This may arise from the palates of the consumers having been unaccustomed to more delicate flavours, and having become habituated to the relish of that which is somewhat rank; just in the same way as the “fumet” of game or venison becomes dear to the palate of the more aristocratic gourmand. To some descriptions of street pastry the epithet strong-flavoured may seem inappropriate, but it is appropriate to the generality of these comestibles,—especially to the tarts, which constitute a luxury, if not to the meat pies or puddings that may supply a meal.
The articles of pastry sold in the London streets are meat and fruit pies, boiled meat and kidney puddings, plum “duff” or pudding, and an almost infinite variety of tarts, cakes, buns, and biscuits; while the confectionary consists of all the several preparations included under the wide denomination of “sweet-stuff,” as well as the more “medicinal” kind known as “cough drops;” in addition to these there are the more “aristocratic” delicacies recently introduced into street traffic, viz., penny raspberry creams and ices.
The itinerant trade in pies is one of the most ancient of the street callings of London. The meat pies are made of beef or mutton; the fish pies of eels; the fruit of apples, currants, gooseberries, plums, damsons, cherries, raspberries, or rhubarb, according to the season—and occasionally of mince-meat. A few years ago the street pie-trade was very profitable, but it has been almost destroyed by the “pie-shops,” and further, the few remaining street-dealers say “the people now haven’t the pennies to spare.” Summer fairs and races are the best places for the piemen. In London the best times are during any grand sight or holiday-making, such as a review in Hyde-park, the Lord Mayor’s show, the opening of Parliament, Greenwich fair, &c. Nearly all the men of this class, whom I saw, were fond of speculating as to whether the Great Exposition would be “any good” to them, or not.
The London piemen, who may number about forty in winter, and twice that number in summer, are seldom stationary. They go along with their pie-cans on their arms, crying, “Pies all ’ot! eel, beef, or mutton pies! Penny pies, all ’ot—all ’ot!” The “can” has been before described. The pies are kept hot by means of a charcoal fire beneath, and there is a partition in the body of the can to separate the hot and cold pies. The “can” has two tin drawers, one at the bottom, where the hot pies are kept, and above these are the cold pies. As fast as the hot dainties are sold, their place is supplied by the cold from the upper drawer.
A teetotal pieman in Billingsgate has a pony and “shay cart.” His business is the most extensive in London. It is believed that he sells 20s. worth or 240 pies a day, but his brother tradesmen sell no such amount. “I was out last night,” said one man to me, “from four in the afternoon till half-past twelve. I went from Somers-town to the Horse Guards, and looked in at all the public-houses on my way, and I didn’t take above 1s. 6d. I have been out sometimes from the beginning of the evening till long past midnight, and haven’t taken more than 4d., and out of that I have to pay 1d. for charcoal.”
The pie-dealers usually make the pies themselves. The meat is bought in “pieces,” of the same part as the sausage-makers purchase—the “stickings”—at about 3d. the pound. “People, when I go into houses,” said one man, “often begin crying, ‘Mee-yow,’ or ‘Bow-wow-wow!’ at me; but there’s nothing of that kind now. Meat, you see, is so cheap.” About five-dozen pies are generally made at a time. These require a quartern of flour at 5d. or 6d.; 2 lbs. of suet at 6d.; 1½ lb. meat at 3d., amounting in all to about 2s. To this must be added 3d. for baking; 1d. for the cost of keeping hot, and 2d. for pepper, salt, and eggs with which to season and wash them over. Hence the cost of the five dozen would be about 2s. 6d., and the profit the same. The usual quantity of meat in each pie is about half an ounce. There are not more than 20 hot-piemen now in London. There are some who carry pies about on a tray slung before them; these are mostly boys, and, including them, the number amounts to about sixty all the year round, as I have stated.
The penny pie-shops, the street men say, have done their trade a great deal of harm. These shops have now got mostly all the custom, as they make the pies much larger for the money than those sold in the streets. The pies in Tottenham-court-road are very highly seasoned. “I bought one there the other day, and it nearly took the skin off my mouth; it was full of pepper,” said a street-pieman, with considerable bitterness, to me. The reason why so large a quantity of pepper is put in is, because persons can’t exactly tell the flavour of the meat with it. Piemen generally are not very particular about the flavour of the meat they buy, as they can season it up into anything. In the summer, a street pieman thinks he is doing a good business if he takes 5s. per day, and in the winter if he gets half that. On a Saturday night, however, he generally takes 5s. in the winter, and about 8s. in the summer. At Greenwich fair he will take about 14s. At a review in Hyde-park, if it is a good one, he will sell about 10s. worth. The generality of the customers are the boys of London. The women seldom, if ever, buy pies in the streets. At the public-houses a few pies are sold, and the pieman makes a practice of “looking in” at all the taverns on his way. Here his customers are found principally in the tap-room. “Here’s all ’ot!” the pieman cries, as he walks in; “toss or buy! up and win ’em!” This is the only way that the pies can be got rid of. “If it wasn’t for tossing we shouldn’t sell one.”
To “toss the pieman” is a favourite pastime with costermongers boys and all that class; some of whom aspire to the repute of being gourmands, and are critical on the quality of the comestible. If the pieman win the toss, he receives 1d. without giving a pie; if he lose, he hands it over for nothing. The pieman himself never “tosses,” but always calls head or tail to his customer. At the week’s end it comes to the same thing, they say, whether they toss or not, or rather whether they win or lose the toss: “I’ve taken as much as 2s. 6d. at tossing, which I shouldn’t have had if I had’nt done so. Very few people buy without tossing, and the boys in particular. Gentlemen ‘out on the spree’ at the late public-houses will frequently toss when they don’t want the pies, and when they win they will amuse themselves by throwing the pies at one another, or at me. Sometimes I have taken as much as half-a-crown, and the people of whom I had the money has never eaten a pie. The boys has the greatest love of gambling, and they seldom, if ever, buys without tossing.” One of the reasons why the street boys delight in tossing, is, that they can often obtain a pie by such means when they have only a halfpenny wherewith to gamble. If the lad wins he gets a penny pie for his halfpenny.
For street mince-meat pies the pieman usually makes 5lb. of mince-meat at a time, and for this he will put in 2 doz. of apples, 1lb. of sugar, 1lb. of currants, 2lb. of “critlings” (critlings being the refuse left after boiling down the lard), a good bit of spice to give the critlings a flavour, and plenty of treacle to make the mince-meat look rich.
The “gravy” which used to be given with the meat-pies was poured out of an oil-can, and consisted of a little salt and water browned. A hole was made with the little finger in the top of the meat pie, and the “gravy” poured in until the crust rose. With this gravy a person in the line assured me that he has known pies four days old to go off very freely, and be pronounced excellent. The street piemen are mostly bakers, who are unable to obtain employment at their trade. “I myself,” said one, “was a bread and biscuit baker. I have been at the pie business now about two years and a half, and I can’t get a living at it. Last week my earnings were not more than 7s. all the week through, and I was out till three in the morning to get that.” The piemen seldom begin business till six o’clock, and some remain out all night. The best time for the sale of pies is generally from ten at night to one in the morning.
Calculating that there are only fifty street piemen plying their trade in London, the year through, and that their average earnings are 8s. a week, we find a street expenditure exceeding 1,040l., and a street consumption of pies amounting nearly to three quarters of a million yearly.
To start in the penny pie business of the streets requires 1l. for a “can,” 2s. 6d. for a “turn-halfpenny” board to gamble with, 12s. for a gross of tin pie-dishes, 8d. for an apron, and about 6s. 6d. for stock money—allowing 1s. for flour, 1s. 3d. for meat, 2d. for apples, 4d. for eels, 2s. for pork flare or fat, 2d. for sugar, ½d. for cloves, 1d. for pepper and salt, 1d. for an egg to wash the pies over with, 6d. for baking, and 1d. for charcoal to keep the pies hot in the streets. Hence the capital required would be about 2l. in all.
The sale of boiled puddings, meat and currant—which might perhaps be with greater correctness called dumplings—has not been known in London, I was informed by one in the trade, more than twelve or fourteen years. The ingredients for the meat puddings are not dissimilar to those I have described as required for the meat pies, but the puddings are boiled, in cotton bags, in coppers or large pans, and present the form of a round ball. The charge is a halfpenny each. Five or six years back a man embarked his means—said to be about 15l.—in the meat-pudding line, and prepared a superior article, which was kept warm in the street by means of steam, in a manner similar to that employed by the pieman. A mechanic out of work was engaged by this projector to aid him in the sale of his street luxuries, and the mechanic and his two boys made a living by this sale for two or three years. The original pudding-projector relinquished the street trade to go into business as a small shop-keeper, and the man who sold for him on a sort of commission, earning from 12s. to 18s. a week, made the puddings on his own account. His earnings, however, on his own account were not above from 1s. to 2s. 6d. a week beyond what he earned by commission, and a little while back he obtained work again at his own business, but his two boys still sell puddings in the street.
The sale of boiled meat puddings is carried on only in the autumn and winter months, and only in the evenings, except on Saturdays, when the business commences in the afternoon. The sale, I was informed by one of the parties, has been as many as forty-five dozen puddings on a Saturday evening. The tins in which the puddings are carried about hold from four to six dozen, and are replenished from the pans—the makers always living contiguous to the street where the vend takes place—as fast as the demand requires such replenishment. An average sale on a fine dry winter Saturday evening is thirty dozen, but then, as in most street callings, “the weather”—a remark often made to me—“has considerable to do with it.” A frost, I was told, helped off the puddings, and a rain kept them back. Next to Saturday the best business night is Monday; but the average sale on the Monday is barely half that on the Saturday, and on the other evenings of the week about a third. This gives a weekly sale by each street-seller of 85 dozen, or 1,020 puddings, and as I am informed there are now but six street-sellers (regularly) of this comestible, the weekly aggregate would be—allowing for bad weather—5,400, or 129,600 in a season of 24 weeks; an expenditure on the part of the street boys and girls (who are the principal purchasers), and of the poor persons who patronise the street-trade, of about 270l. per annum. The wandering street-musicians of the poorer class—such as “Old Sarey” and the Italian boys—often make their dinner off a meat pudding purchased on their rounds; for it is the rule with such people never to return home after starting in the morning till their day’s work is done.
The boys who ply their callings in the street, or are much in the open air, are very fond of these puddings, and to witness the way in which they throw the pudding, when very hot, from hand to hand, eyeing it with an expression that shows an eagerness to eat with a fear of burning the mouth, is sometimes laughable and sometimes painful, because not unfrequently there is a look of keen hunger about the—probably outcast—lad. The currant puddings are, I believe, sold only at Billingsgate and Petticoat-lane.
Plum dough is one of the street-eatables—though perhaps it is rather a violence to class it with the street-pastry—which is usually made by the vendors. It is simply a boiled plum, or currant, pudding, of the plainest description. It is sometimes made in the rounded form of the plum-pudding; but more frequently in the “roly-poly” style. Hot pudding used to be of much more extensive sale in the streets. One informant told me that twenty or thirty years ago, batter, or Yorkshire, pudding, “with plums in it,” was a popular street business. The “plums,” as in the orthodox plum-puddings, are raisins. The street-vendors of plum “duff” are now very few, only six as an average, and generally women, or if a man be the salesman he is the woman’s husband. The sale is for the most part an evening sale, and some vend the plum dough only on a Saturday night. A woman in Leather-lane, whose trade is a Saturday night trade, is accounted “one of the best plum duffs” in London, as regards the quality of the comestible, but her trade is not considerable.
The vendors of plum dough are the street-sellers who live by vending other articles, and resort to plum dough, as well as to other things, “as a help.” This dough is sold out of baskets in which it is kept hot by being covered with cloths, sometimes two and even three, thick; and the smoke issuing out of the basket, and the cry of the street-seller, “Hot plum duff, hot plum,” invite custom. A quartern of flour, 5d.; ½ lb. Valentia raisins, 2d.; dripping and suet in equal proportions, 2½d.; treacle, ½d.; and allspice, ½d.—in all 10½d.; supply a roly-poly of twenty pennyworths. The treacle, however, is only introduced “to make the dough look rich and spicy,” and must be used sparingly.
The plum dough is sold in slices at ½d. or 1d. each, and the purchasers are almost exclusively boys and girls—boys being at least three-fourths of the revellers in this street luxury. I have ascertained—as far as the information of the street-sellers enables me to ascertain—that take the year through, six “plum duffers” take 1s. a day each, for four winter months, including Sundays, when the trade is likewise prosecuted. Some will take from 4s. to 10s. (but rarely 10s.) on a Saturday night, and nothing on other nights, and some do a little in the summer. The vendors, who are all stationary, stand chiefly in the street-markets and reside near their stands, so that they can get relays of hot dough.
If we calculate then 42s. a week as the takings of six persons, for five months, so including the summer trade, we find that upwards of 200l. is expended in the street purchase of plum dough, nearly half of which is profit. The trade, however, is reckoned among those which will disappear altogether from the streets.
The capital required to start is: basket, 1s. 9d.; cloths, 6d.; pan for boiling, 2s.; knife, 2d.; stock-money, 2s.; in all about, 7s. 6d.
These men and boys—for there are very few women or girls in the trade—constitute a somewhat numerous class. They are computed (including Jews) at 150 at the least, all regular hands, with an addition, perhaps, of 15 or 20, who seek to earn a few pence on a Sunday, but have some other, though poorly remunerative, employment on the week-days. The cake and tart-sellers in the streets have been, for the most part, mechanics or servants; a fifth of the body, however, have been brought up to this or to some other street-calling.
The cake-men carry their goods on a tray slung round their shoulders when they are offering their delicacies for sale, and on their heads when not engaged in the effort to do business. They are to be found in the vicinity of all public places. Their goods are generally arranged in pairs on the trays; in bad weather they are covered with a green cloth.
None of the street-vendors make the articles they sell; indeed, the diversity of those articles renders that impossible. Among the regular articles of this street-sale are “Coventrys,” or three-cornered puffs with jam inside; raspberry biscuits; cinnamon biscuits; “chonkeys,” or a kind of mince-meat baked in crust; Dutch butter-cakes; Jews’ butter-cakes; “bowlas,” or round tarts made of sugar, apple, and bread; “jumbles,” or thin crisp cakes made of treacle, butter, and flour; and jams, or open tarts with a little preserve in the centre.
All these things are made for the street-sellers by about a dozen Jew pastry-cooks, the most of whom reside about Whitechapel. They confine themselves to the trade, and make every description. On a fine holiday morning their shops, or rather bake-houses, are filled with customers, as they supply the small shops as well as the street-sellers of London. Each article is made to be sold at a halfpenny, and the allowance by the wholesale pastry-cook is such as to enable his customers to realise a profit of 4d. in 1s.; thus he charges 4d. a dozen for the several articles. Within the last seven years there has been, I am assured, a great improvement in the composition of these cakes, &c. This is attributable to the Jews having introduced superior dainties, and, of course, rendered it necessary for the others to vie with them: the articles vended by these Jews (of whom there are from 20 to 40 in the streets) are still pronounced, by many connoisseurs in street-pastry, as the best. Some sell penny dainties also, but not to a twentieth part of the halfpenny trade. One of the wholesale pastry-cooks takes 40l. a week. These wholesale men, who sometimes credit the street-people, buy ten, fifteen, or twenty sacks of flour at a time whenever a cheap bargain offers. They purchase as largely in Irish butter, which they have bought at 3d. or 2½d. the pound. They buy also “scrapings,” or what remains in the butter-firkins when emptied by the butter-sellers in the shops. “Good scrapings” are used for the best cakes; the jam they make themselves. To commence the wholesale business requires a capital of 600l. To commence the street-selling requires a capital of only 10s.; and this includes the cost of a tray, about 1s. 9d.; a cloth 1s.; and a leathern strap, with buckle, to go round the neck, 6d.; while the rest is for stock, with a shilling, or two as a reserve. All the street-sellers insist upon the impossibility of any general baker making cakes as cheap as those they vend. “It’s impossible, sir,” said one man to me; “it’s a trade by itself; nobody else can touch it. They was miserable little things seven years ago.”
An acute-looking man, decently dressed, gave me the following account. He resided with his wife—who went out charing—in a decent little back-room at the East-end, for which he paid 1s. a week. He had no children:—
“I’m a ‘translator’ (a species of cobbler) by trade,” he said, “but I’ve been a cake and a tart-seller in the streets for seven or eight years. I couldn’t make 1s. 3d. a day of twelve hours’ work, and sometimes nothing, by translating. Besides, my health was failing; and, as I used to go out on a Sunday with cakes to sell for a cousin of mine, I went into the trade myself, because I’d got up to it. I did middling the first three or four years, and I’d do middling still, if it wasn’t for the bad weather and the police. I’ve been up three times for ‘obstructing.’ Why, sir, I never obstructed a quarter as much as the print-shops and newspaper-shops down there” (pointing to a narrow street in the City). “But the keepers of them shops can take a sight at the Lord Mayor from behind their tills. The first time I was up before the Lord Mayor—it’s a few years back—I thought he talked like an old wife. ‘You mustn’t stand that way,’ he says, ‘and you mustn’t do this, and you mustn’t do that.’ ‘Well, my lord,’ says I, ‘then I mustn’t live honestly. But if you’ll give me 9s. a week, I’ll promise not to stand here, and not to stand there; and neither to do this, nor that, nor anything at all, if that pleases you better.’ They was shocked, they said, at my impudence—so young a fellow, too! I got off each time, but a deal of my things was spoiled. I work the City on week-days, and Victoria Park on Sundays. In the City, my best customers is not children, but young gents; real gents, some of them with gold watches. They buys twopenn’orth, mostly—that’s four of any sort, or different sorts. They’re clerks in banks and counting-houses, I suppose, that must look respectable like on a little, and so feeds cheap, poor chaps! for they dine or lunch off it, never doubt. Or they may be keeping their money for other things. To sell eleven dozen is a first-rate days’ work; that’s 1s. 9d. or 1s. 10d. profit. But then comes the wet days, and I can’t trade at all in the rain; and so the things get stale, and I have to sell them in Petticoat-lane for two a halfpenny. Victoria Park—I’m not let inside with my tray—is good and bad as happens. It’s chiefly a tossing trade there. Oh, I dare say I toss 100 times some Sundays. I don’t like tossing the coster lads, they’re the wide-awakes that way. The thieves use ‘grays.’ They’re ha’pennies, either both sides heads or both tails. Grays sell at from 2d. to 6d. I’m not often had that way, though. Working-people buy very few of me on Sundays; it’s mostly boys; and next to the gents., why, perhaps, the boys is my best customers in the City. Only on Monday a lad, that had been lucky ‘fiddling’” (holding horses, or picking up money anyhow) “spent a whole shilling on me. I clear, I think—and I’m among the cakes that’s the top of the tree—about 10s. a week in summer, and hardly 7s. a week in winter. My old woman and me makes both ends meet, and that’s all.”
Reckoning 150 cake-sellers, each clearing 6s. a week, a sufficiently low average, the street outlay will be 2,340l., representing a street-consumption of 1,123,200 cakes, tarts, &c.
The street cake-selling of London is not altogether confined to the class I have described; but the others engaged in it are not regular pursuers of the business, and do not exceed thirty in number. Some stock their trays with flare-cakes, which are round cakes, made of flour and “unrendered” (unmelted) lard, and stuck over freely with currants. They are sold at a farthing and a halfpenny each. Others, again, carry only sponge-cakes, made of flour and eggs, packed closely and regularly together, so as to present an uniform and inviting surface. Others carry only gingerbread, made of flour and treacle. These small trades are sometimes resorted to for a temporary purpose, rather than a street-seller’s remaining in compulsory idleness. I learned also that cake-sellers in the regular line, when unable to command sufficient capital to carry on their trade in the way they have been accustomed to, sell “flayers,” so called from being made with pig’s or sheep’s “flay,” or any other cheap cakes, and so endeavour to retrieve themselves. The profits on these plainer sorts is 1d. in 1s. more than that on the others, but the sale rarely exceeds half as much. I heard, however, of one man who deposited in pence, in eight days, 1s. 10d. with a wholesale pastry-cook. He had saved this sum by almost starving himself, on the sale of the inferior cakes, and the dealer trusted him the 10d. to make up eight dozen in the regular cake business. To commence the street sale of cheap cakes requires a capital of less than 5s.; for tray, 1s. 6d.; cloth, 6d.; strap, 6d.; and stock-money, 1s. 6d.
Three or four men are occupied in selling plum-cakes. These are generally sold in half-penny and penny lots. The plum-cake is made by the same class of pastrycooks whom I have described as supplying the tarts, puffs, &c., and sold on the same terms. The profits are fifty per cent.—what cost 4s. bringing in 6s. One man who travels to all the fairs and races, and is more in the country than town in the summer and autumn, sells large quantities of plum-cake in Smithfield when in town, sometimes having 2l. worth and more on his stall. He sells cakes of a pound (ostensibly) at 4d., 6d., and 8d., according to quality. He sometimes supplies the street-sellers on the same terms as the pastrycooks, for he was once a baker.
From the best data at my command, it appears that the sale of these inferior cakes does not realise above a fifth of that taken by the other sellers, of whom I have treated, amounting to about 450l. in all.
The sale of gingerbread, as I have previously observed, was much more extensive in the streets than it is at present. Indeed, what was formerly known in the trade as “toy” gingerbread is now unseen in the streets, except occasionally, and that only when the whole has not been sold at the neighbouring fairs, at which it is still offered. But, even at these fairs, the principal, and sometimes the only, toy gingerbread that is vended is the “cock in breeches;” a formidable-looking bird, with his nether garments of gold. Twenty or thirty years ago, “king George on horseback” was popular in gingerbread. His Majesty, wearing a gilt crown, gilt spurs, and a gilt sword, bestrode the gilt saddle of his steed, and was eaten with great relish by his juvenile subjects. There were also sheep, and dogs, and other animals, all adorned in a similar manner, and looking as if they had been formed in close and faithful imitation of children’s first attempts at cattle drawing. These edible toys were then sold in “white,” as well as in “brown” gingerbread, the white being the same in all other respects as the brown, except that a portion of sugar was used in its composition instead of treacle.
There are now only two men in London who make their own gingerbread-nuts for sale in the streets. This preparation of gingerbread is called by the street-sellers, after a common elliptical fashion, merely “nuts.” From the most experienced man in the street trade I had the following account: he was an intelligent, well-mannered, and well-spoken man, and when he laughed or smiled, had what may be best described as a pleasant look. After he had initiated me into the art and mystery of gingerbread making—which I shall detail separately—he said,
“I’ve been in the ‘nut’ trade 25 years, or thereabouts, and have made my own nuts for 20 years of that time. I bought of a gingerbread baker at first—there was plenty of them in them days—and the profit a living profit, too. Certainly it was, for what I bought for 5s. I could sell for 16s. I was brought up a baker, but the moment I was out of my time I started in the street nut trade for myself. I knew the profits of it, and thought it better than the slavery of a journeyman baker’s life. You’ve mentioned, sir, in your work, a musical sort of a street-crier of gingerbread (see p. 160), and I think, and indeed I’m pretty certain, that it’s the same man as was my partner 20 years back; aye, more than 20, but I can’t tell about years.” [The reader will have remarked how frequently this oblivion as to dates and periods characterises the statements of street-sellers. Perhaps no men take less note of time.] “At that time he was my partner in the pig trade. Dairy-fed, d’you say, sir? Not in the slightest. The outsides of the hanimals was paste, and the insides on ’em was all mince-meat. Their eyes was currants. We two was the original pigs, and, I believe, the only two pigs in the streets. We often made 15s. between us, in a day, in pigs alone. The musical man, as you call him—poor fellow, he dropped down dead in the street one day as he was crying; he was regular worn out—cried himself into his grave you may say—poor fellow, he used to sing out