“When I was first in the trade, I sold twice as many nuts as I do now, though my nuts was only 12 a penny then, and they’re now 40. A little larger the 12 were, but not very much. I have taken 20s. and 24s. many and many a Saturday. I then made from 2l. to 2l. 10s. a week by sticking to it, and money might have been saved. I’ve taken between 7l. and 8l. at a Greenwich Fair in the three days, in them times, by myself. Indeed, last Easter, my wife and me—for she works as well as I do, and sells almost as much—took 5l. But gingerbread was money in the old times, and I sold ‘lumps’ as well as ‘nuts;’ but now lumps won’t go off—not in a fair, no how. I’ve been in the trade ever since I started in it, but I’ve had turns at other things. I was in the service of a Custom-house agency firm; but they got into bother about contrabands, and the revenue, and cut off to America—I believe they took money with them, a good bit of it—and I was indicted, or whatever they call it, in the Court of Exchequer—I never was in the Court in my life—and was called upon, one fine day, to pay to the Crown 1,580l., and some odd pounds and shillings besides! I never understood the rights of it, but it was about smuggling. I was indicted by myself, I believe. When Mr. Candy, and other great houses in the City, were found out that way, they made it all right; paid something, as I’ve heard, and sacked the profits. Well; when I was called on, it wasn’t, I assure you, sir—ha, ha, ha!—at all convenient for a servant—and I was only that—to pay the fifteen hundred and odd; so I served 12 months and 2 days in prison for it. I’d saved a little money, and wasn’t so uncomfortable in prison. I could get a dinner, and give a dinner. When I came out, I took to the nuts. It was lucky for me that I had a trade to turn to; for, even if I could have shown I wasn’t at all to blame about the Exchequer, I could never have got another situation—never. So the streets saved me: my nuts was my bread.

“At this present time, sir, if I make, the year through, 9s. a week, and my wife 1s. or 2s. less, that’s the extent. When the Queen opened Parliament, the two on us took 10s. The Queen’s good for that, anyhow, in person. If the opening was by proclamation” [so he called it, three or four times], “it wouldn’t have been worth while going to—not at all. If there’s not a crowd, the police interfere, and ‘move on!’ is the order. The Queen’s popular with me, for her opening Parliament herself. I count it her duty. The police are a great trouble. I can’t say they disturb me in the place (never mind mentioning it, sir) where you’ve seen me, but they do in other places. They say there’s no rest for the wicked; but, in the streets, there’s no rest for a man trying to make an honest living, as I’m sure I do. I could pitch anywhere, one time.

“My chief dependence is on working-men, who buys my nuts to take home to their young ’uns. I never sell for parties, or desserts, that I know of. I take very little from boys—very little. The women of the town buy hardly any of me. I used to sell a good many pigs to them, in some of the streets about Brunswick-square; kept misses, and such like—and very pleasant customers they was, and good pay: but that’s all over now. They never ’bated me—never.”

To make about 56 lbs. of the gingerbread-nuts sold by my informant, takes 28 lbs. of treacle, 7s.; 48 lbs. of flour, 14s.; ½ lb. of ginger, 4d.; and ½ lb. of allspice, 4d. From 18 to 20 dozen of small nuts go to the pound. This quantity, at 40 a penny, reckoning 18 dozen to a pound, realises about 5d. per pound; or about 25s. for an outlay of 11s. 8d. The expense of baking, however, and of “appurtenances,” reduces the profit to little more than cent. per cent.

The other nut-sellers in the streets vend the “almond nuts.” Of these vendors there are not less than 150; of them, 100 buy their goods of the bakers (what they sell for 1s. costing them 4d.), and the other 50 make their own. The materials are the same as those of the gingerbread, with the addition of 4 lbs. of butter, 8d. per lb.; 1 lb. of almonds, 1s. 4d.; and 2 lbs. of volatile salts, 8d. Out of this material, 60 lbs. of “almond nuts” may be made. A split almond is placed in the centre of each of these nuts; and, as they are three times as large as the gingerbread nuts, 12 a penny is the price. To sell 36 dozen a day—and so clearing 2s.—is accounted a “very tidy day’s work.” With the drawback of wet weather, the average weekly earnings of the almond nut-sellers are, perhaps, the same as the gingerbread nut man’s—9s. weekly. These almond nut-sellers are, for the most part, itinerant, their localities of sale being the same as in the “cake and tart” line. They carry their goods, neatly done up in paper, on trays slung from the shoulder. The gingerbread-nuts are carried in a large basket, and are ready packed in paper bags.

Some of the “almond” men call at the public-houses, but the sale in such places is very small. Most of those who make their own nuts have been brought up as bakers—a class of workmen who seem to resort and adapt themselves to a street trade more readily than others. The nuts are baked in the usual way, spread on tin trays. To erect a proper oven for the purpose costs about 5l., but most of the men hire the use of one.

I have already specified the materials required to make 56 lb. of gingerbread nuts, the cost being 11s. 8d. To that, the capital required to start in the business must be added, and this consists of basket, 6s.; baize cloth, 1s.; pan for dough, 1s.; rolling-pin, 3d., and baking-tins, 1s. In all about 21s. To begin in a small way in the “almond” line, buying the nuts ready made, requires as capital: tray, 2s.; leather strap, 6d.; baize, 1s.; stock-money, 1s. 6d.—in all 5s. The sale is prosecuted through the year, but hot weather is unfavourable to it, as the nuts then turn soft.

Calculating that 150 of these street-dealers take 17s. each weekly (clearing 9s.), we find 6,630l. spent yearly in “spice” nuts in the streets of London.

Of the Street-sellers of Hot-Cross Buns, and of Chelsea Buns.

Perhaps no cry—though it is only for one morning—is more familiar to the ears of a Londoner, than that of “One-a-penny, two-a-penny, hot-cross buns,” on Good Friday. The sale is unknown in the Irish capital; for among Roman Catholics, Good Friday, I need hardly say, is a strict fast, and the eggs in the buns prevent their being used. One London gentleman, who spoke of fifty years ago, told me that the street-bun-sellers used to have a not unpleasing distich. On reflection, however, my informant could not be certain whether he had heard this distich cried, or had remembered hearing the elders of his family speak of it as having been cried, or how it was impressed upon his memory. It seems hardly in accordance with the usual style of street poetry:—

A tradesman who had resided more than fifty years in the Borough had, in his boyhood, heard, but not often, this ridiculous cry:—

The sellers of the Good Friday buns are principally boys, and they are of mixed classes—costers’ boys, boys habitually and boys occasionally street-sellers, and boys street-sellers for that occasion only. One great inducement to embark in the trade is the hope of raising a little money for the Greenwich Fair of the following Monday.

I am informed that 500 persons are employed on Good Friday in the streets of London in the sale of hot-cross buns, each itinerant selling upon the day’s average six dozen halfpenny, and seven dozen penny buns, for which he will take 12s. 6d. (his profits being 3d. in the shilling or 3s. 1½d.). One person informed me that last Good Friday he had sold during the day forty dozen penny buns, for which he received 50s.

The bun-selling itinerants derive their supplies principally from the wholesale pastry-cooks, and, in a less degree, from the small bakers and pastrycooks, who work more for “the trade” than themselves. The street hot-cross bun trade is less than it was seven or eight years ago, as the bakers have entered into it more freely, and send round for orders: so that the itinerants complain that they have lost many a good customer. One informant (a master pastry-cook, who had been in the business nearly fifty years) said to me: “Times are sadly altered to what they were when I was a boy. Why I have known my master to bake five sacks of flour in nothing but hot-cross buns, and that is sufficient for 20,000 buns” (one sack of flour being used for 4,000 buns, or 500 lbs. of raw material to the same quantity of buns). The itinerants carry their baskets slung on their arm, or borne upon the head. A flannel or green baize is placed at the bottom of the basket and brought over the buns, after which a white cloth is spread over the top of the baize, to give it a clean appearance.

A vendor of “hot-cross buns” has to provide himself with a basket, a flannel (to keep the buns warm), and a cloth, to give a clean appearance to his commodities. These articles, if bought for the purpose, cost—basket, 2s. 6d.; flannel and cloth, 2s.; stock-money, average, 5s. (largest amount 15s., smallest 2s. 6d.); or about 10s. in all.

There is expended in one day, in hot-cross buns purchased in the London streets, 300l., and nearly 100,000 buns thus bought.

The Chelsea buns are now altogether superseded by the Bath and Alexander’s buns. “People,” the street-sellers say, “want so much for their money.” There are now but two Chelsea bun-houses; the one at Pimlico, and the other at Chelsea. The principal times Chelsea buns were sold in the streets was Good Friday, Easter, and Whitsuntide; and, with the exception of Good Friday, the great sales were at Greenwich Fair, and then they were sold with other cakes and sweetmeats. I am informed that twenty years ago there was one man, with a rich musical voice, who sold these buns, about Westminster principally, all the year round; his cry—which was one of the musical ones—was, “One a penny, two a penny, hot Chelsea buns! Burning hot! smoking hot! r-r-r-reeking hot! hot Chelsea buns!”

Of Muffin and Crumpet-selling in the Streets.

The street-sellers of muffins and crumpets rank among the old street-tradesmen. It is difficult to estimate their numbers, but they were computed for me at 500, during the winter months. They are for the most part boys, young men, or old men, and some of them infirm. There are a few girls in the trade, but very few women.

The ringing of the muffin-man’s bell—attached to which the pleasant associations are not a few—was prohibited by a recent Act of Parliament, but the prohibition has been as inoperative as that which forbad the use of a drum to the costermonger, for the muffin bell still tinkles along the streets, and is rung vigorously in the suburbs. The sellers of muffins and crumpets are a mixed class, but I am told that more of them are the children of bakers, or worn-out bakers, than can be said of any other calling. The best sale is in the suburbs. “As far as I know, sir,” said a muffin-seller, “it’s the best Hackney way, and Stoke Newington, and Dalston, and Balls Pond, and Islington; where the gents that’s in banks—the steady coves of them—goes home to their teas, and the missuses has muffins to welcome them; that’s my opinion.”

I did not hear of any street-seller who made the muffins or crumpets he vended. Indeed, he could not make the small quantity required, so as to be remunerative. The muffins are bought of the bakers, and at prices to leave a profit of 4d. in 1s. Some bakers give thirteen to the dozen to the street-sellers whom they know. The muffin-man carries his delicacies in a basket, wherein they are well swathed in flannel, to retain the heat: “People likes them warm, sir,” an old man told me, “to satisfy them they’re fresh, and they almost always are fresh; but it can’t matter so much about their being warm, as they have to be toasted again. I only wish good butter was a sight cheaper, and that would make the muffins go. Butter’s half the battle.” The basket and flannels cost the muffin-man 2s. 6d. or 3s. 6d. His bell stands him in from 4d. to 2s., “according as the metal is.” The regular price of good-sized muffins from the street-sellers is a halfpenny each; the crumpets are four a penny. Some are sold cheaper, but these are generally smaller, or made of inferior flour. Most of the street-sellers give thirteen, and some even fourteen to the dozen, especially if the purchase be made early in the day, as the muffin-man can then, if he deem it prudent, obtain a further supply.

A sharp London lad of fourteen, whose father had been a journeyman baker, and whose mother (a widow) kept a small chandler’s shop, gave me the following account:—

“I turns out with muffins and crumpets, sir, in October, and continues until it gets well into the spring, according to the weather. I carries a fust-rate article; werry much so. If you was to taste ’em, sir, you’d say the same. If I sells three dozen muffins at ½d. each, and twice that in crumpets, it’s a werry fair day, werry fair; all beyond that is a good day. The profit on the three dozen and the others is 1s., but that’s a great help, really a wonderful help, to mother, for I should be only mindin’ the shop at home. Perhaps I clears 4s. a week, perhaps more, perhaps less; but that’s about it, sir. Some does far better than that, and some can’t hold a candle to it. If I has a hextra day’s sale, mother’ll give me 3d. to go to the play, and that hencourages a young man, you know, sir. If there’s any unsold, a coffee-shop gets them cheap, and puts ’em off cheap again next morning. My best customers is genteel houses, ’cause I sells a genteel thing. I likes wet days best, ’cause there’s werry respectable ladies what don’t keep a servant, and they buys to save themselves going out. We’re a great conwenience to the ladies, sir—a great conwenience to them as likes a slap-up tea. I have made 1s. 8d. in a day; that was my best. I once took only 2½d.—I don’t know why—that was my worst. The shops don’t love me—I puts their noses out. Sunday is no better day than others, or werry little. I can read, but wish I could read easier.”

Calculating 500 muffin-sellers, each clearing 4s. a week, we find 100l. a week expended on the metropolitan street sale of muffins; or, in the course of twenty weeks, 2,000l. Five shillings, with the price of a basket, &c., which is about 3s. 6d. more, is the capital required for a start.

Of the Street Sale of Sweet-stuff.

In this sale there are now engaged, as one of the most intelligent of the class calculated, 200 individuals, exclusive of twenty or thirty Jew boys. The majority of the sellers are also the manufacturers of the articles they vend. They have all been brought up to the calling, their parents having been in it, or having been artizans (more especially bakers) who have adopted it for some of the general reasons I have before assigned. The non-makers buy of the cheap confectioners.

The articles now vended do not differ materially, I am informed by men who have known the street trade for forty years, from those which were in demand when they began selling in the streets.

A very intelligent man, who had succeeded his father and mother in the “sweet-stuff” business—his father’s drunkenness having kept them in continual poverty—showed me his apparatus, and explained his mode of work. His room, which was on the second-floor of a house in a busy thoroughfare, had what I have frequently noticed in the abodes of the working classes—the decency of a turn-up bedstead. It was a large apartment, the rent being 3s. 6d. a week, unfurnished. The room was cheerful with birds, of which there were ten or twelve. A remarkably fine thrush was hopping in a large wicker cage, while linnets and bullfinches showed their quick bright eyes from smaller cages on all sides. These were not kept for sale but for amusement, their owner being seldom able to leave his room. The father and mother of this man cleared, twenty years ago, although at that time sugar was 6d. or 7d. the pound, from 2l. to 3l. a week by the sale of sweet-stuff; half by keeping a stall, and half by supplying small shops or other stall-keepers. My present informant, however, who has—not the best—but one of the best businesses in London, makes 24s. or 25s. a week from October to May, and scarcely 12s. a week during the summer months, “when people love to buy any cool fresh fruit instead of sweet-stuff.” The average profits of the generality of the trade do not perhaps exceed 10s. 6d. or 12s. a week, take the year round. They reside in all parts.

Treacle and sugar are the ground-work of the manufacture of all kinds of sweet-stuff. “Hardbake,” “almond toffy,” “halfpenny lollipops,” “black balls,” the cheaper “bulls eyes,” and “squibs” are all made of treacle. One informant sold more of treacle rock than of anything else, as it was dispensed in larger halfpennyworths, and no one else made it in the same way. Of peppermint rock and sticks he made a good quantity. Half-a-crown’s worth, as retailed in the streets, requires 4 lbs. of rough raw sugar at 4¼d. per lb., 1½d. for scent (essence of peppermint), 1½d. for firing, and ½d. for paper—in all 1s. 8½d. calculating nothing for the labour and time expended in boiling and making it. The profit on the other things was proportionate, except on almond rock, which does not leave 2½d. in a shilling—almonds being dear. Brandy balls are made of sugar, water, peppermint, and a little cinnamon. Rose acid, which is a “transparent” sweet, is composed of loaf sugar at 6½d. per lb., coloured with cochineal. The articles sold in “sticks” are pulled into form along a hook until they present the whitish, or speckled colour desired. A quarter of a stone of materials will, for instance, be boiled for forty minutes, and then pulled a quarter of an hour, until it is sufficiently crisp and will “set” without waste. The flavouring—or “scent” as I heard it called in the trade—now most in demand is peppermint. Gibraltar rock and Wellington pillars used to be flavoured with ginger, but these “sweeties” are exploded.

Dr. Pereria, in his “Treatise on Diet,” enumerates as many as ten different varieties and preparations of sugar used for dietetical purposes. These are (1) purified or refined sugar; (2) brown or raw sugar; (3) molasses or treacle—or fluid sugar; (4) aqueous solutions of sugar—or syrups; (5) boiled sugars, or the softer kinds of confectionary; (6) sugar-candy, or crystallized cane sugar; (7) burnt sugar, or caramel; (8) hard confectionary; (9) liquorice; (10) preserves. The fifth and eighth varieties alone concern us here.

Of the several preparations of boiled sugar, the Doctor thus speaks, “If a small quantity of water be added to sugar, the mixture heated until the sugar dissolves, and the solution boiled to drive off part of the water, the tendency of the sugar to crystallise is diminished, or, in some cases, totally destroyed. To promote this effect, confectioners sometimes add a small portion of cream of tartar to the solution while boiling. Sugar, thus altered by heat, and sometimes variously flavoured, constitutes several preparations sold by the confectioner. Barley-sugar and acidulated drops are prepared in this way from white sugar: powdered tartaric acid being added to the sugar while soft. Hardbake and toffee are made by a similar process from brown sugar. Toffee differs from hardbake from containing butter. The ornamented sugar pieces, or caramel-tops, with which pastrycooks decorate their tarts, &c., are prepared in the same way. If the boiled and yet soft sugar be rapidly and repeatedly extended, and pulled over a hook, it becomes opaque and white, and then constitutes pulled sugar, or penides. Pulled sugar, variously flavoured and coloured, is sold in several forms by the preparers of hard confectionary.

“Concerning this hard confectionary,” Dr. Pereira says, “sugar constitutes the base of an almost innumerable variety of hard confectionary, sold under the names of lozenges, brilliants, pipe, rock, comfits, nonpareils, &c. Besides sugar, these preparations contain some flavouring ingredient, as well as flour or gum, to give them cohesiveness, and frequently colouring matter. Carraway, fruits, almonds, and pine seeds, constitute the nuclei of some of these preparations.”

One of the appliances of the street sweet-stuff trade which I saw in the room of the seller before mentioned was—Acts of Parliament. A pile of these, a foot or more deep, lay on a shelf. They are used to wrap up the rock, &c., sold. The sweet-stuff maker (I never heard them called confectioners) bought his “paper” of the stationers, or at the old book-shops. Sometimes, he said, he got works in this way in sheets which had never been cut (some he feared were stolen,) and which he retained to read at his short intervals of leisure, and then used to wrap his goods in. In this way he had read through two Histories of England! He maintained a wife, two young children, and a young sister, who could attend to the stall; his wife assisted him in his manufactures. He used 1 cwt. of sugar a week on the year’s average, ½ cwt. of treacle, and 5 oz. of scents, each 8d. an oz.

The man who has the best trade in London streets, is one who, about two years ago, introduced—after much study, I was told—short sentences into his “sticks.” He boasts of his secret. When snapped asunder, in any part, the stick presents a sort of coloured inscription. The four I saw were: “Do you love me?” The next was of less touching character, “Do you love sprats?” The others were, “Lord Mayor’s Day,” and “Sir Robert Peel.” This man’s profits are twice those of my respectable informant’s.

Of the Customers of the Sweet-stuff Street-sellers.

Another sweet-stuff man, originally a baker, but who, for a fortnight before I saw him, had been attending upon an old gentleman, disabled from an accident, gave me the following account of his customers. What I heard from the other street-sellers satisfies me of the correctness of the statement. It will be seen that he was possessed of some humour and observation:

“Boys and girls are my best customers, sir, and mostly the smallest of them; but then, again, some of them’s fifty, aye, turned fifty; Lor’ love you. An old fellow, that hasn’t a stump of a tooth in front, why, he’ll stop and buy a ha’porth of hard-bake, and he’ll say, ‘I’ve a deal of the boy left about me still.’ He doesn’t show it, anyhow, in his look. I’m sometimes a thinking I’ll introduce a softer sort of toffy—boiled treacle, such as they call Tom Trot in some parts, but it’s out of fashion now, just for old people that’s ‘boys still.’ It was rolled in a ha’penny stick, sir, and sold stunnin’. The old ones wants something to suck, and not to chew. Why, when I was a lad at school, there was Jews used to go about with boxes on their backs, offering rings and pencil-cases, and lots of things that’s no real use to nobody, and they told everybody they asked to buy ‘that they sold everything,’ and us boys used to say—‘Then give’s a ha’porth of boiled treacle.’ It was a regular joke. I wish I’d stuck more to my book then, but what can’t be cured must be endured, you know. Now, those poor things that walks down there” (intimating, by a motion of the head, a thoroughfare frequented by girls of the town), “they’re often customers, but not near so good as they was ten year ago; no, indeed, nor six or eight year. They like something that bites in the mouth, such as peppermint-rock, or ginger-drops. They used to buy a penn’orth or two and offer it to people, but they don’t now, I think. I’ve trusted them ha’pennies and pennies, sometimes. They always paid me. Some that held their heads high like, might say: ‘I really have no change; I’ll pay you to-morrow.’ She hadn’t no change, poor lass, sure enough, and she hadn’t nothing to change either, I’ll go bail. I’ve known women, that seemed working men’s or little shopkeeper’s wives, buy of me and ask which of my stuffs took greatest hold of the breath. I always knew what they was up to. They’d been having a drop, and didn’t want it to be detected. Why, it was only last Saturday week two niceish-looking and niceish-dressed women, comes up to me, and one was going to buy peppermint-rock, and the other says to her: ‘Don’t, you fool, he’ll only think you’ve been drinking gin-and-peppermint. Coffee takes it off best.’ So I lost my customers. They hadn’t had a single drain that night, I’ll go bail, but still they didn’t look like regular lushingtons at all. I make farthing’s-worths of sweet-stuff, for children, but I don’t like it; it’s an injury to trade. I was afraid that when half-farthings was coined, they’d come among children, and they’d want half a farthing of brandy-balls. Now, talking of brandy-balls, there’s a gentleman that sometimes has a minute’s chat with me, as he buys a penn’orth to take home to his children—(every reasonable man ought to marry and have children for the sake of the sweet-trade, but it ain’t the women’s fault that many’s single still)—when one gentleman I knows buys brandy-balls, he says, quite grave, ‘What kind o’ brandy do you put in them?’ ‘Not a drop of British,’ says I, ‘I can assure you; not a single drop.’ He’s not finely dressed; indeed, he’s a leetle seedy, but I know he’s a gentleman, or what’s the same thing, if he ain’t rich; for a common fellow’ll never have his boots polished that way, every day of his life; his blacking bills must come heavy at Christmas. I can tell a gentleman, too, by his way of talk, ’cause he’s never bumptious. It’s the working people’s children that’s my great support, and they was a better support, by 2s. in every 10s., and more, when times was better; and next to them among my patrons is poor people. Perhaps, this last year, I’ve cleared 11s. a week, not more, all through. I make my own stuffs, except the drops, and they require machinery. I would get out of the streets if I could.”

Another of these traders told me, that he took more in farthings, than in halfpennies or pennies.

Calculating 200 sweet-stuff sellers, each clearing 10s. weekly, the outlay in rocks, candies, hard-bakes, &c., in the streets is 5,200l. yearly, or nearly two and a half millions of halfpenny-worths.

To start in the sweet-stuff business requires a capital of 35s., including a saucepan in which to boil sugar, 2s.; weights and scales, 4s.; stock-money (average), 4s.; and barrow, 25s. If the seller be not his own manufacturer, then a tray, 1s. 9d.; and stock-money, 1s. 6d.; or 3s. 3d. in all will be sufficient.

Of the Street-sellers of Cough Drops and of Medical Confectionary.

Mr. Strutt, in his “Sports and Pastimes of the People of England” (1800), says of the Mountebank: “It is uncertain at what period this vagrant dealer in physic made his appearance in England; it is clear, however, that he figured away with much success in this country during the last two centuries.... The mountebanks usually preface the vending of their medicines with pompous orations, in which they pay as little regard to truth as to propriety.” I am informed by a gentleman observant of the matter, that within his knowledge, which extends to the commencement of the present century, no mountebank (proper) had appeared in the streets of London proclaiming the virtues of his medicines; neither with nor without his “fool.” The last seen by my informant, perhaps the latest mountebank in England, was about twenty years ago, in the vicinity of Yarmouth. He was selling “cough drops” and infallible cures for asthma, and was dressed in a periwig and an embroidered coat, with ruffles at his wrist, a sword to his side, and was a representation, in shabby genteel, of the fine gentleman of the reign of Queen Anne. The mountebank’s most legitimate successor in the street cajolery of London, as regards his “orations,” is the “Patterer,” as I shall show in my account of the street trade in stationery literature. His successor in the vending of curative confectionaries and (in a small degree) of nostrums, salves, ointments, &c., are the sellers of “cough drops” and “horehound candy,” and of the corn salves, and cures for bruises, sprains, burns, &c., &c., &c.

The street-traders in cough drops and their accompaniments, however, do not now exceed six, and of them only two—who are near relatives—manufacture their own stock-in-trade. I here treat of the street trade in “cough drops,” as a branch of the itinerant sweet-stuff trade. The “mountebank” part of the business—that is to say, “the prefacing the vending of the medicines with pompous orations,” I shall reserve till its proper place—viz. the “pattering” part of the street trade, of which an account will be given in the next Chapter.

The two principal vendors of cough drops wheel their stalls, which are fixed upon barrows, to different parts of town, but one principal stand is in Holborn. On their boards are displayed the cough cures, both in the form of “sticks” and “drops,” and a model of a small distillery. The portion inclosing the still is painted to resemble brick-work, and a tin tube, or worm, appears to carry the distillation to a receiver. Horehound, colts-foot, and some other herbs lie in a dried state on the stall, but principally horehound, to which popular (street) opinion seems to attach the most and the greatest virtues. There are also on the stalls a few bottles, tied up in the way they are dispensed from a regular practitioner, while the cough drops are in the form of sticks (½d. each), also neatly wrapped in paper. The cry is both expressive and simply descriptive—“Long life candy! Candy from herbs!”

From the most experienced person in this curious trade, I had the following statement. He entertained a full assurance, as far as I could perceive, of the excellence of his remedies, and of the high art and mystery of his calling. In persons of his class, professing to heal, no matter in what capacity, or what may be the disease, this is an important element of success. My informant, whether answering my questions or speaking of his own accord, always took time to consider, and sometimes, as will be seen, declined replying to my inquiries. From him I received the following account:—

“The cough drop and herb trade is nothing now to what it was long ago. Thirty or forty years ago, it was as good as 3l. or 4l. a week to a person, and was carried on by respectable men. I know nothing of any ‘humbugs’ in the respectable part of the trade. What’s done by those who are ignorant, and not respectable, is nothing to me. I don’t know how many there were in the trade thirty or forty years ago; but I know that, ten or eleven years since, I supplied seven persons who sold cough drops, and such like, in the streets, and now I supply only myself and another. I sell only four or five months in the year—the cold months, in course; for, in the summer, people are not so subject to coughs and colds. I am the ‘original’ maker of my goods. I will cure any child of the hooping-cough, and very speedily. I defy any medical man to dispute it, and I’ll do it—‘no cure, no pay.’ I never profess to cure asthma. Nobody but a gravedigger can put an end to that there; but I can relieve it. It’s the same with consumption; it may be relieved, but the gravedigger is the only man as can put a stop to it. Many have tried to do it, but they’ve all failed. I sell to very respectable people, and to educated people, too; and, what’s more, a good deal (of cough drops) to medical men. In course, they can analyse it, if they please. They can taste the bitter, and judge for themselves, just as they can taste wine in the Docks. Perhaps the wives of mechanics are among my best customers. They are the most numerous, but they buy only ha’porths and penn’orths. Very likely, they would think more of the remedy if they had to pay 13½d. for it, instead of the 1½d. The Government stamp makes many a stuff sell. Oh! I know nothing about quackery: you must inquire at the Stamp-office, if you want to know about them kind of medicines. They’re the people that help to sell them. Respectable people will pay me 1s. or 2s. at a time; and those who buy once, buy again. I’m sent to from as far off as Woolwich. I’ll undertake to cure, or afford relief, in coughs, colds, or wind in the chest, or forfeit 1s. I can dispel wind in two minutes. I sell bottles, too, for those cures (as well as the candy from herbs): I manufacture them myself. They’re decoctions of herbs, and the way to prepare them is my secret. I sell them at from 2d. to 1s. Why, I use one article that costs 24s. a pound, foreign, and twice that English. I’ve sold hundred weights. The decoctions are my secret. I will instruct any person—and have instructed a good many—when I’m paid for it. In course, it would never do to publish it in your work, for thousands would then learn it for 2d. My secret was never given to any person—only with what you may call a fee—except one, and only to him when he got married, and started in the line. He’s a connection of mine. All we sell is genuine.

“I sell herbs, too, but it’s not a street sale: I supply them to orders from my connection. It’s not a large trade. I sell horehound, for tea or decoctions; coltsfoot, for smoking as herb tobacco (I gather the coltsfoot myself, but buy the horehound of a shopkeeper, as it’s cultivated); ground-ivy is sold only for the blood (but little of it); hyssop for wind; and Irish moss for consumption. I’m never asked for anything improper. They won’t ask me for —— or ——. And I’m never asked for washes or cosmetics; but a few nettles are ordered of me for complexions.

“Well, sir, I’d rather not state the quantities I sell, or my profits, or prices. I make what keeps myself, my wife, and seven children, and that’s all I need say about it. I’d rather say no more on that part of the business: and so, I’m sure you won’t press me. I don’t know what others in the trade make. They buy of confectioners, and are only imitators of me. They buy coltsfoot-candy, and such like; how it’s made so cheap, I don’t know. In the summer, I give up cough-drop selling, and take to gold fish.”

I am told that the cough-drop-makers, who are also street-sellers, prepare their sticks, &c., much in the same method as the manufacturers of the ordinary sweet-stuff (which I have described), using the decoction, generally of horehound or coltsfoot, as the “scents” are used. In the old times, it would appear that the preparation of a medicinal confection was a much more elaborate matter, if we may judge by the following extract from an obsolete medical work treating of the matter. The author styles such preparations “lohochs,” which is an Arabic word, he says, and signifies “a thing to be licked.” It would appear that the lohoch was not so hard as the present cough-drop. The following is one of the receipts, “used generally against diseases in the breast and lungs:”—

Without wishing to infringe upon professional secrets, I may mention that the earnings of the principal man in the trade may be taken at 30s. a week for 20 weeks; that of another at 15s. for the same period; and those of the remaining four at 5s. each, weekly; but the latter sell acid drops, and other things bought of the chemists. Allowing the usual cent. per cent., we then find 130l. expended by street-buyers on cough-drops.

The best cough-drop stall seen in the streets is a kind of barrow, which can be shut up like a piano: it cost 3l. 10s. complete with the distilling apparatus before described. Scales and weights cost 5s., and the stock-money for the supply of such a stall need not exceed 10s.; or, in all, about 4l. 10s. For an ordinary trade—ready-made articles forming the stock—the capital would be, stall and trestle, 7s.; scales and weights (which are not always used), 3s. 6d., and stock-money, 2s. 6d.; in all, 13s.

Of the Street-sellers of Ices and of Ice Creams.

I have already treated of the street luxury of pine-apples, and have now to deal with the greater street rarity of ice-creams.

A quick-witted street-seller—but not in the “provision” line—conversing with me upon this subject, said: “Ices in the streets! Aye, and there’ll be jellies next, and then mock turtle, and then the real ticket, sir. I don’t know nothing of the difference between the real thing and the mock, but I once had some cheap mock in an eating-house, and it tasted like stewed tripe with a little glue. You’ll keep your eyes open, sir, at the Great Exhibition; and you’ll see a new move or two in the streets, take my word for it. Penny glasses of champagne, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Notwithstanding the sanguine anticipations of my street friend, the sale of ices in the streets has not been such as to offer any great encouragement to a perseverance in the traffic.

The sale of ice-creams was unknown in the streets until last summer, and was first introduced, as a matter of speculation, by a man who was acquainted with the confectionary business, and who purchased his ices of a confectioner in Holborn. He resold these luxuries daily to street-sellers, sometimes to twenty of them, but more frequently to twelve. The sale, however, was not remunerative, and had it not been generally united with other things, such as ginger-beer, could not have been carried on as a means of subsistence. The supplier of the street-traders sometimes went himself, and sometimes sent another to sell ice-cream in Greenwich Park on fine summer days, but the sale was sometimes insufficient to pay his railway expenses. After three or four weeks’ trial, this man abandoned the trade, and soon afterwards emigrated to America.

Not many weeks subsequent to “the first start,” I was informed, the trade was entered into by a street-seller in Petticoat-lane, who had become possessed, it was said, of Masters’s Freezing Apparatus. He did not vend the ices himself for more than two or three weeks, and moreover confined his sale to Sunday mornings; after a while he employed himself for a short time in making ices for four or five street-sellers, some of whom looked upon the preparation as a wonderful discovery of his own, and he then discontinued the trade.

There were many difficulties attending the introduction of ices into street-traffic. The buyers had but a confused notion how the ice was to be swallowed. The trade, therefore, spread only very gradually, but some of the more enterprising sellers purchased stale ices from the confectioners. So little, however, were the street-people skilled in the trade, that a confectioner told me they sometimes offered ice to their customers in the streets, and could supply only water! Ices were sold by the street-vendors generally at 1d. each, and the trade left them a profit of 4d. in 1s., when they served them “without waste,” and some of the sellers contrived, by giving smaller modicums, to enhance the 4d. into 5d.; the profit, however, was sometimes what is expressively called “nil.” Cent. per cent.—the favourite and simple rate known in the streets as “half-profits” was rarely attained.

From a street-dealer I received the following account:—

“Yes, sir, I mind very well the first time as I ever sold ices. I don’t think they’ll ever take greatly in the streets, but there’s no saying. Lord! how I’ve seen the people splutter when they’ve tasted them for the first time. I did as much myself. They get among the teeth and make you feel as if you tooth-ached all over. I sold mostly strawberry ices. I haven’t an idee how they’re made, but it’s a most wonderful thing in summer—freezing fruits in that way. One young Irish fellow—I think from his look and cap he was a printer’s or stationer’s boy—he bought an ice of me, and when he had scraped it all together with the spoon, he made a pull at it as if he was a drinking beer. In course it was all among his teeth in less than no time, and he stood like a stattey for a instant, and then he roared out,—‘Jasus! I’m kilt. The could shivers is on to me!’ But I said, ‘O, you’re all right, you are;’ and he says, ‘What d’you mane, you horrid horn,[8] by selling such stuff as that. An’ you must have the money first, bad scran to the likes o’ you!’

“The persons what enjoyed their ices most,” the man went on, “was, I think, servant maids that gulped them on the sly. Pr’aps they’d been used, some on ’em, to get a taste of ices on the sly before, in their services. We sees a many dodges in the streets, sir—a many. I knew one smart servant maid, treated to an ice by her young man—they seemed as if they was keeping company—and he soon was stamping, with the ice among his teeth, but she knew how to take hern, put the spoon right into the middle of her mouth, and when she’d had a clean swallow she says: ‘O, Joseph, why didn’t you ask me to tell you how to eat your ice?’ The conceit of sarvant gals is ridiculous. Don’t you think so, sir? But it goes out of them when they gets married and has to think of how to get broth before how to eat ices. One hot day, about eleven, a thin tall gentleman, not very young, threw down 1d. to me, and says, says he, ‘As much ice as you can make for that.’ He knew how to take it. When he’d done, he says, says he, ‘By G—, my good feller, you’ve saved my life. I’ve been keeping it up all night, and I was dying of a burnt-up throat, after a snooze, and had only 1d. So sick and hot was my stomach, I could have knelt down and taken a pull at the Thames’—we was near it at the time—‘You’ve saved my life, and I’ll see you again.’ But I’ve never see’d him since. He was a gentleman, I think. He was in black, and wore a big black and gold ring—only one.

“The rest of my customers for ices, was people that bought out of curiosity, and there was gentlemen’s servants among ’em, very little fellows some of ’em; and doctors’ boys; and mechanics as was young and seemed of a smartish sort; and boys that seemed like schoolboys; and a few women of the town,—but mine’s not much of a pitch for them.”

From the information I obtained, I may state that, if the sale of street ices be calculated at twenty persons taking, not earning, 1s. 6d. daily for four weeks, it is as near the mark as possible. This gives an expenditure of 42l. in street ices, with a profit to the vendors of from 10 to 25 per cent. I am told that an unsuccessful start has characterised other street trades—rhubarb for instance, both in the streets and markets—which have been afterwards successful and remunerative.

For capital in the ice trade a small sum was necessary, as the vendors had all stalls and sold other commodities, except the “original street ice man,” who was not a regular street trader, but a speculator. A jar—in which the ices were neither sufficiently covered nor kept cooled, though it was often placed in a vessel or “cooler,” containing cold water—cost 1s., three cups, 3d. (or three glasses, 1s.), and three spoons, 3d., with 2s. stock-money; the total is, presuming glasses were used, 4s., or, with a vessel for water, 5s.

OF THE CAPITAL AND INCOME OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF EATABLES AND DRINKABLES.

I now give a summary of the Capital and Income of the street-sellers of eatables and drinkables. But, first, I will endeavour to arrive at an estimate of the total number of people belonging to the class.

The street-sellers engaged in the sale of eatables and drinkables, are, summing the several items before given, altogether 6,347: of whom 300 sell pea-soup and hot eels; 150, pickled whelks; 300, fried fish; 300, sheeps’ trotters; 60, ham-sandwiches; 200, baked ’tatoes; 4, hot green peas; 150, meat; 25, bread; 1,000, cat and dogs’ meat; 300, coffee and tea; 1,700, ginger-beer, lemonade, sherbet, &c.; 50, elder-wine; 4, peppermint-water; 28, milk; 100, curds and whey and rice-milk; 60, water; 50, pies; 6, boiled pudding; 6, plum “duff”; 150, cakes and tarts; 4, plum-cakes; 30, other cheaper cakes; 150, gingerbread-nuts; 500, cross-buns; 500, muffins and crumpets; 200, sweet stuff; 6, cough-drops; 20, ice-creams. But many of the above are only temporary trades. The street-sale of hot cross-buns, for instance, lasts only for a day; that of muffins and crumpets, baked potatoes, plum-“duff,” cough-drops, elder-wine, and rice-milk, are all purely winter trades, while the sale of ginger-beer, lemonade, ice-creams, and curds and whey, is carried on solely in the summer. By this means the number of the street-sellers of eatables and drinkables, never at any one time reaches the amount before stated. In summer there are, in addition to the 10,000 costers before mentioned, about 3,000 people, and in winter between 4,000 and 5,000, engaged in the eatable and drinkable branch of the street-traffic.

As regards the Capital and Income, many minute accounts have been prepared.

To show the care, as well as the fulness with which these returns have been made, I give one of the Tables in its integrity, merely remarking, that similar tables relative to all the other articles have been made; but I condense the details, lest a repetition, however curious in its statistics, should prove wearisome:

Capital, or Stock in Trade, of the Street-sellers of Eatables and Drinkables.