“The women bought very free; poor women, mostly; we only worked him to any extent in the back drags. One old body at Stepney was so pleased that she said, ‘O, the bloody-minded willain! Whenever you come this way again, sir, there’s always 1d. for you.’ She didn’t pay in advance though.

“Then it ended, sir, with a beautiful moral as appeals to every female bosom:—

“We always likes something for the ladies, bless ’em. They’re our best customers.

“Then there was poor Jael Denny, but she was humped, sir, and I’ve told you the reason. Her copy of werses began:—

“My last chaunt was Jane Wilbred; and her werses—and they did tidy well—began:—

“What do you think of the Great Exhibition, sir? I shall be there. Me and my mates. We are going to send in a copy of werses in letters of gold for a prize. We’ll let the foreigners know what the real native melodies of England is, and no mistake.”

Of the Death and Fire Hunters.

I have described the particular business of the running patterer, who is known by another and a very expressive cognomen—as a “Death Hunter.” This title refers not only to his vending accounts of all the murders that become topics of public conversation, but to his being a “murderer” on his own account, as in the sale of “cocks” mentioned incidentally in this narrative. If the truth be saleable, a running patterer prefers selling the truth, for then—as one man told me—he can “go the same round comfortably another day.” If there be no truths for sale—no stories of criminals’ lives and loves to be condensed from the diffusive biographies in the newspapers—no “helegy” for a great man gone—no prophecy and no crim. con.—the death hunter invents, or rather announces, them. He puts some one to death for the occasion, which is called “a cock.” The paper he sells may give the dreadful details, or it may be a religious tract, “brought out in mistake,” should the vendor be questioned on the subject; or else the poor fellow puts on a bewildered look and murmurs, “O, it’s shocking to be done this way—but I can’t read.” The patterers pass along so rapidly that this detection rarely happens.

One man told me that in the last eight or ten years, he, either singly or with his “mob,” had twice put the Duke of Wellington to death, once by a fall from his horse, and the other time by a “sudden and myst-erious” death, without any condescension to particulars. He had twice performed the same mortal office for Louis Phillipe, before that potentate’s departure from France; each death was by the hands of an assassin; “one was stabbing, and the other a shot from a distance.” He once thought of poisoning the Pope, but was afraid of the street Irish. He broke Prince Albert’s leg, or arm, (he was not sure which), when his royal highness was out with his harriers. He never had much to say about the Queen; “it wouldn’t go down,” he thought, and perhaps nothing had lately been said. “Stop, there, sir,” said another patterer, of whom I inquired as to the correctness of those statements, (after my constant custom in sifting each subject thoroughly,) “stop, stop, sir. I have had to say about the Queen lately. In coorse, nothing can be said against her, and nothing ought to; that’s true enough, but the last time she was confined, I cried her accouchement (the word was pronounced as spelt to a merely English reader, or rather more broadly) of three! Lord love you, sir, it would have been no use crying one; people’s so used to that; but a Bobby came up and he stops me, and said it was some impudence about the Queen’s coachman! Why look at it, says I, fat-head—I knew I was safe—and see if there’s anything in it about the Queen or her coachman! And he looked, and in coorse there was nothing. I forget just now what the paper was about.” My first-mentioned informant had apprehended Feargus O’Connor on a charge of high treason. He assassinated Louis Napoleon, “from a fourth edition of the Times,” which “did well.” He caused Marshal Haynau to die of the assault by the draymen. He made Rush hang himself in prison. He killed Jane Wilbred, and put Mrs. Sloane to death; and he announced the discovery that Jane Wilbred was Mrs. Sloane’s daughter.

This informant did not represent that he had originated these little pieces of intelligence, only that he had been a party to their sale, and a party to originating one or two. Another patterer—and of a higher order of genius—told me that all which was stated was undoubtedly correct, “but me and my mates, sir,” he said, “did Haynau in another style. A splendid slum, sir! Capital! We assassinated him—mys-terious. Then about Rush. His hanging hisself in prison was a fake, I know; but we’ve had him lately. His ghost appeared—as is shown in the Australian papers—to Emily Sandford, and threatened her; and took her by the neck, and there’s the red marks of his fingers to be seen on her neck to this day!” The same informant was so loud in his praise of the “Ass-sass-sination” of Haynau that I give the account. I have little doubt it was his own writing. It is confused in passages, and has a blending of the “I” and the “we:”—

[My informant complained bitterly, and not without reason, of the printer. “Average,” for instance (which I have italicised), should be “avenger.” The “average of outraged innocence!”]

It is very easy to stigmatise the death-hunter when he sets off all the attractions of a real or pretended murder,—when he displays on a board, as does the standing patterer, “illustrations” of “the ’dentical pick-axe” of Manning, or the stable of Good,—or when he invents or embellishes atrocities which excite the public mind. He does, however, but follow in the path of those who are looked up to as “the press,”—as the “fourth estate.” The conductors of the Lady’s Newspaper sent an artist to Paris to give drawings of the scene of the murder by the Duc de Praslin,—to “illustrate” the blood-stains in the duchess’s bed-chamber. The Illustrated London News is prompt in depicting the locality of any atrocity over which the curious in crime may gloat. The Observer, in costly advertisements, boasts of its 20 columns (sometimes with a supplement) of details of some vulgar and mercenary bloodshed,—the details being written in a most honest deprecation of the morbid and savage tastes to which the writer is pandering. Other weekly papers have engravings—and only concerning murder—of any wretch whom vice has made notorious. Many weekly papers had expensive telegraphic despatches of Rush’s having been hung at Norwich, which event, happily for the interest of Sunday newspapers, took place in Norwich at noon on a Saturday. [I may here remark, that the patterers laugh at telegraphs and express trains for rapidity of communication, boasting that the press strives in vain to rival them,—as at a “hanging match,” for instance, the patterer has the full particulars, dying speech, and confession included—if a confession be feasible—ready for his customers the moment the drop falls, and while the criminal may still be struggling, at the very scene of the hanging. At a distance he sells it before the hanging. “If the Times was cross-examined about it,” observed one patterer, “he must confess he’s outdone, though he’s a rich Times, and we is poor fellows.” But to resume—]

A penny-a-liner is reported, and without contradiction, to have made a large sum by having hurried to Jersey in Manning’s business, and by being allowed to accompany the officers when they conducted that paltry tool of a vindictive woman from Jersey to Southampton by steamer, and from Southampton to London by “special engine,” as beseemed the popularity of so distinguished a rascal and homicide; and next morning the daily papers, in all the typographical honour of “leads” and “a good place,” gave details of this fellow’s—this Manning’s—conversation, looks, and demeanour.

Until the “respectable” press become a more healthful public instructor, we have no right to blame the death-hunter, who is but an imitator—a follower—and that for a meal. So strong has this morbid feeling about criminals become, that an earl’s daughter, who had “an order” to see Bedlam, would not leave the place until she had obtained Oxford’s autograph for her album! The rich vulgar are but the poor vulgar—without an excuse for their vulgarity.

“Next to murders, fires are tidy browns,” I was told by a patterer experienced both in “murders” and “fires.” The burning of the old Houses of Parliament was very popular among street-sellers, and for the reason which ensures popularity to a commercial people; it was a source of profit, and was certainly made the most of. It was the work of incendiaries,—of ministers, to get rid of perplexing papers,—of government officers with troublesome accounts to balance,—of a sporting lord, for a heavy wager,—of a conspiracy of builders,—and of “a unsuspected party.” The older “hands” with whom I conversed on the subject, all agreed in stating that they “did well” on the fire. One man said, “No, sir, it wasn’t only the working people that bought of me, but merchants and their clerks. I s’pose they took the papers home with ’em for their wives and families, which is a cheap way of doing, as a newspaper costs 3d. at least. But stop, sir,—stop; there wasn’t no threepennies then,—nothing under 6d., if they wasn’t more; I can’t just say, but it was better for us when newspapers was high. I never heard no sorrow expressed,—not in the least. Some said it was a good job, and they wished the ministers was in it.” The burning of the Royal Exchange was not quite so beneficial to the street-sellers, but “was uncommon tidy.” The fire at the Tower, however, was almost as great a source of profit as that of the Houses of Parliament, and the following statement shows the profit reaped.

My informant had been a gentleman’s servant, his last place being with a gentleman in Russell-square, who went to the East Indies, and his servant was out of a situation so long that he “parted with everything.” When he was at the height of his distress, he went to see the fire at the Tower, as he “had nothing better to do.” He remained out some hours, and before he reached his lodging, men passed him, crying the full and true particulars of the fire. “I bought one,” said the man, “and changed my last shilling. It was a sudden impulse, for I saw people buy keenly. I never read it, but only looked at the printer’s name. I went to him at the Dials, and bought some, and so I went into the paper trade. I made 6s. or 7s. some days, while the Tower lasted; and 3s. and 4s. other days, when the first polish was off. I sold them mostly at 1d. a piece at first. It was good money then. The Tower was good, or middling good, for from 14 to 20 days. There was at least 100 men working nothing but the Tower. There’s no great chance of any more great buildings being burnt; worse luck. People don’t care much about private fires. A man in this street don’t heed so much who’s burnt to death in the next. But the foundation-stone of the new Royal Exchange—fire led to that—was pretty fair, and portraits of Halbert went off, so that it was for two or three days as good as the Tower. Fires is our best friends next to murders, if they’re good fires. The hopening of the Coal Exchange was rather tidy. I’ve been in the streets ever since, and don’t see how I could possibly get out of them. At first I felt a great degradation at being driven to the life. I shunned grooms and coachmen, as I might be known to them. I didn’t care for others. That sort of feeling wears out though. I’m a widower now, and my family feels, as I did at first, that what I’m doing is ‘low.’ They won’t assist—though they may give me 1s. now and then—but they won’t assist me to leave the streets. They’ll rather blame me for going into them, though there was only that, or robbing, or starving. The fire at Ben. Caunt’s, where the poor children was burnt to hashes, was the best of the private house fires that I’ve worked, I think. I made 4s. on it one day. He was the champion once, and was away at a fight at the time, and it was a shocking thing, and so people bought.”

After the burning of York Minster by Jonathan Martin, I was told by an old hand, the (street) destruction of the best known public buildings in the country was tried; such as Canterbury Cathedral, Dover Castle, the Brighton Pavilion, Edinburgh Castle, or Holyrood House—all known to “travelling” patterers—but the success was not sufficiently encouraging. It was no use, I was told, firing such places as Hampton Court or Windsor Castle, for unless people saw the reflection of a great fire, they wouldn’t buy.

Of the Sellers of Second Editions.

These “second editions” are, and almost universally, second or later editions of the newspapers, morning and evening, but three-fourths of the sale may be of the evening papers, and more especially of the Globe and Standard.

I believe that there is not now in existence—unless it be in a workhouse and unknown to his fellows, or engaged in some other avocation and lost sight of by them—any one who sold “second editions” (the Courier evening paper being then in the greatest demand) at the time of the Duke of York’s Walcheren expedition, at the period of the battle of the Nile, during the continuance of the Peninsular war, or even at the battle of Waterloo. There were a few old men—some of whom had been soldiers or sailors, and others who have simulated it—surviving within these 5 or 6 years, and some later, who “worked Waterloo,” but they were swept off, I was told, by the cholera.

I was assured by a gentlemen who had a perfect remembrance of the “second editions” (as they were generally called) sold in the streets, and who had often bought them upwards of forty years ago, that a sketch in the “Monthly Review,” in a notice of Scott’s “Lord of the Isles” (published in 1815), gave the best notion he had met with of what the second edition sale really was. At the commencement of the sixth canto of his poem, Sir Walter, somewhat too grandiloquently, in the judgment of his reviewer, asks—

“Who,” in his turn asks the reviewer, “can avoid conjuring up the idea of men with broad sheets of foolscap, scored with ‘VICTORIES’ rolled round their hats, and horns blowing loud defiance in each other’s mouth, from the top to the bottom of Pall-mall or the Haymarket, when he reads such a passage? We actually hear the Park and Tower guns, and the clattering of ten thousand bells, as we read, and stop our ears from the close and sudden intrusion of some hot and horn-fisted patriot, blowing ourselves, as well as Bonaparte to the devil!”

The horn carried by these “horn-fisted” men was a common tin tube, from two to three feet long, and hardly capable of being made to produce any sound beyond a sudden and discordant “trump, trump.” The men worked with papers round their hats, in a way not very dissimilar to that of the running patterers of to-day.

The “editions” cried by these men during the war-time often contained spurious intelligence, but for that the editors of the journals were responsible—or the stock-jobbers who had imposed upon them. Any one who has consulted a file of newspapers of the period to which I have referred, will remember how frequent, and how false, were the announcements, or the rumours, of the deaths of Bonaparte, his brothers, or his marshals, in battle or by assassination.

As there was no man who was personally conversant with this traffic in what is emphatically enough called the “war-time,” I sought out an old street-patterer who had been acquainted with the older hands in the trade, whose experience stretched to the commencement of the present century, and from him I received the following account:

“Oh, yes,” he began, “I’ve worked ‘seconds.’ We used to call the editions generally seconds, and cry them sometimes, as the latest editions, whatever it was. There was Jack Griffiths, sir,—now wasn’t he a hand at a second edition? I believe you. I do any kind of patter now myself, but I’ve done tidy on second editions, when seconds was to be had. Why, Jack Griffiths, sir—he’d been a sailor and was fond of talking about the sea—Jack Griffiths—you would have liked to have heard him—Jack told me that he once took 10s. 6d.—it was Hyde Park way—for a second edition of a paper when Queen Caroline’s trial was over. Besides Jack, there was Tom Cole, called the Wooden Leg (he’d been a soldier I believe), and Whitechapel, and Old Brummagem, and Hell-fire Jack. Hell-fire Jack was said to be something to a man that was a trainer, and a great favourite of the old Duke of Queensberry, and was called Hell-fire Dick; but I can’t say how it was. I began to work second editions, for the first time when George IV. died. They went off pretty well at 1s. a piece, and for three or four I got 2s. 6d. If it’s anything good I get 1s. still, but very seldom any more. I always show anybody that asks that the paper is just what I’ve cried it. There’s no regular cry; we cries what’s up: ‘Here’s the second edition of the Globe with the full perticlers of the death of his Majesty King George IV.’ We work much in the same way as the running patter. Three of us shouts in the same spot. I was one of three who one night sold five quires, mostly Globe and Standard. It was at the Reform Bill time, and something about the Reform Bill. I never much heeded what the paper was about. I only wanted the patter, and soon got it. A mate, or any of us, looks out for anything good in the evening papers, to be ready. Why that night I speak of I was kept running backards and for’ards to the newspaper offices—and how they does keep you waiting at times!—mostly the Globe and Standard; we worked them all at the West End. There’s twenty-seven papers to a quire, and we gave 4d. a piece for ’em and sold none, as well as I mind, for under 1s. I carried them mostly under my arm or in my hat, taking care they wasn’t spoiled. Belgrave-square way, and St. George’s, Hanover-square way, and Hyde Park way, are the best. The City’s no good. There’s only sixpences there. The coffee-shops has spoiled the City, as I’m afeard they will other parts. Murders in second editions don’t sell now, and aren’t tried much, beyond a few, if there’s a late verdict. Curviseer (Courvoisier) was tidy. The trial weren’t over ’til evening, and I sold six papers, and got 7s. for them, to gentlemen going away by the mail. I’ve heard that Greenacre was good in the same way, but I wasn’t in town at the time. The French Revolution—the last one—was certainly a fairish go. Lewis Fillup was good many ways. When he used to be shot at—if the news weren’t too early in the day—and when he got to England, and when he was said to have got back, or to have been taken. Why, of course he wern’t to compare with Rush in the regular patter, but he was very fair. I have nothing to say against him, and wish he was alive, and could do it all over again. Lord Brougham’s death wern’t worth much to us. You remember the time, I dare say, sir, when they said he killed hisself in the papers, to see what folks would say on him. The resignation of a prime minister is mostly pretty good. Lord Melbourne was, and so was Sir Robert Peel. There’s always somebody to say, ‘Hurra! that’s right!’ and to buy a paper because he’s pleased. I had a red paper in my hat when I worked the French Revolution. French news is generally liked in a fashionable drag. Irish news is no good, for people don’t seem to believe it. Smith O’Brien’s battle, though, did sell a little. It’s not possible to tell you exactly what I’ve made on seconds. How can I? One week I may have cleared 1l. in them, and for six months before not a blessed brown. Perhaps—as near as I can recollect and calculate—I’ve cleared 3l. (if that) each year, one with another, in second editions in my time, and perhaps twenty others has done the same.”

Another man who also knew the old hands said to me: “Lord bless us, how times is changed! you should have heard Jack Griffiths tell how he cried his gazettes: ‘He-ere’s the London Gazette Ex-terornary, containing the hof-ficial account of the bloody and decisive wictory of Sally-manker.’ Something that way. Patter wern’t required then; the things sold theirselves. Why, the other day I was talking to a young chap that conceits hisself to be a hout-and-houter in patter, and I mentions Jack’s crying Gazettes and getting 5s. apiece for many a one on ’em, and this young chap says, says he: ‘Gazettes! What did they cry Gazettes?—bankrupts, and all that?’ ‘Bankrupts be blowed!’ said I, ‘wictories!’ I heerd Waterloo cried when I was a little ’un. The speeches on the opening of parliament, which the newspapers has ready, has no sale in the crowd to what they had. I only sold two papers at 6d. each this last go. I ventured on no more, or should have been a loser. If the Queen isn’t there, none’s sold. But we always has a speech ready, as close as can be got from what the morning papers says. One gent. said to me: ‘But that ain’t the real speech!’ ‘It’s a far better,’ says I, and so it is. Why now, sir, there’s some reading and spirit in this bit. The Queen says:

This man showed me the street speech, which was on a broad sheet set off with the royal arms. The topics and arrangement were the same as those in the speech delivered by her Majesty.

On Monday morning last (Feb. 24), I asked the man who told me that prime ministers’ resignations were “pretty good” for the street traffic, if he had been well remunerated by the sale of the evening papers of Saturday, with the account of Lord John Russell’s resignation. “It wern’t tried, sir,” he answered; “there was nothing new in the evenings, and we thought nobody seemed to care about it. The newspaper offices and their boarders (as he called the men going about with announcements on boards) didn’t make very much of it, so we got up a song instead, but it was no good,—not salt to a fresh herring—for there was some fresh herrings in. It was put strong, though. This was the last verse:

Adopting the calculation of my first informant, and giving a profit of 150 per cent., we find 150l. yearly expended in the streets, in second editions, or probably it might be more correct to say 200l. in a year of great events, and 50l. in a year when such events are few.

Of the Standing Patterers.

The standing patterer I have already described in his resemblance to the mountebank of old, and how, like his predecessor, he required a “pitch” and an audience. I need but iterate that these standing patterers are men who remain in one place, until they think they have exhausted the custom likely to accrue there, or until they are removed by the police; and who endeavour to attract attention to their papers, or more commonly pamphlets, either by means of a board with coloured pictures upon it, illustrative of the contents of what they sell, or else by gathering a crowd round about them, in giving a lively or horrible description of the papers or books they are “working.” The former is what is usually denominated in street technology, “board work.” A few of the standing patterers give street recitations or dialogues.

Some of the “illustrations” most “in vogue” of late for the boards of the standing patterers were,—the flogging of the nuns of Minsk, the blood streaming from their naked shoulders, (anything against the Emperor of Russia, I was told, was a good street subject for a painting); the young girl, Sarah Thomas, who murdered her mistress in Bristol, dragged to the gallows by the turnkeys and Calcraft, the hangman; Calcraft himself, when charged with “starving his mother;” Haynau, in the hands of the draymen; the Mannings, and afterwards the Sloanes. The two last-mentioned were among the most elaborate, each having a series of “compartments,” representing the different stages of the events in which those heroes and heroines flourished. I shall speak afterwards of street-artists who are the painters of these boards, and then describe the pictures more fully. There are also, as before alluded to, what may be called “cocks” in street paintings, as well as street literature.

Two of the most favourite themes of the standing patterers were, however, the “Annals of the White House in Soho-square,” and the “Mysteries of Mesmerism.” Both supplied subjects to the boards.

The White House was a notorious place of ill fame. Some of the apartments, it is said, were furnished in a style of costly luxury; while others were fitted up with springs, traps, and other contrivances, so as to present no appearance other than that of an ordinary room, until the machinery was set in motion. In one room, into which some wretched girl might be introduced, on her drawing a curtain as she would be desired, a skeleton, grinning horribly, was precipitated forward, and caught the terrified creature in his, to all appearance, bony arms. In another chamber the lights grew dim, and then seemed gradually to go out. In a little time some candles, apparently self-ignited, revealed to a horror stricken woman, a black coffin, on the lid of which might be seen, in brass letters, Anne, or whatever name it had been ascertained the poor wretch was known by. A sofa, in another part of the mansion, was made to descend into some place of utter darkness; or, it was alleged, into a room in which was a store of soot or ashes.

Into the truth or exaggeration of these and similar statements, it is not my business to inquire; but the standing patterer made the most of them. Although the house in question has been either rebuilt or altered—I was told that each was the case—and its abominable character has ceased to apply to it for some years, the patterer did not scruple to represent it as still in existence (though he might change the venue as to the square at discretion) and that all the atrocities perpetrated—to which I have not ventured even to allude—were still the ordinary procedures of “high life.” Neither did the standing patterer scruple, as one man assured me, to “name names;” to attribute vile deeds to any nobleman or gentleman whose name was before the public; and to embellish his story by an allusion to a recent event. He not unfrequently ended with a moral exhortation to all ladies present to avoid this “abode of iniquity for the rich.” The board was illustrated with skeletons, coffins, and other horrors; but neither on it, nor in a hardly intelligible narrative which the patterer sold, was there anything indecent.

The “Mysteries of Mesmerism” was an account of the marvels of that “newly-discovered and most wonderful power in natur and art.” With it Dr. Elliotson’s, or some well-known name, was usually associated, and any marvel was “pattered,” according to the patterer’s taste and judgment. The illustrations were of persons, generally women, in a state of coma, but in this also there was no indecency; nor was there in the narrative sold.

Of these two popular exhibitions there are, I am informed, none now in town, and both, I was told, was more the speculations of a printer, who sent out men, than in the hands of the regular patterers.

It may tend somewhat to elucidate the character of the patterers, if I here state, that in my conversation with the whole of them, I heard from their lips strong expressions of disgust at Sloane,—far stronger than were uttered in abhorrence of any murderer. Rush, indeed, was, and is, a popular man among them. One of them told me, that not long before Madame Tussaud’s death, he thought of calling upon that “wenerable lady,” and asking her, he said, “to treat me to something to drink the immortal memory of Mr. Rush, my friend and her’n.”

It is admitted by all concerned in the exercise of street elocution, that “the stander” must have “the best of patter.” He usually works alone,—there are very rarely two at standing patter,—and beyond his board he has no adventitious aids, as in the running patter, so that he must be all the more effective; but the board is pronounced “as good as a man.” When the standing patterer visits the country, he is accompanied by a mate, and the “copy of werses” is then announced as being written by an “under-paid curate” within a day’s walk. “It tells mostly, sir,” said one man; “for it’s a blessing to us that there always is a journeyman parson what the people knows, and what the patter fits.” Sometimes the poetry is attributed to a sister of mercy, or to a popular poetess; very frequently, by the patterers who best understand the labouring classes, to Miss Eliza Cook. Sometimes the verses are written by “a sympathising gent. in that parish,” but his name wasn’t to be mentioned. Another intelligent patterer whom I questioned on the subject, told me that my information was correct. “It’s just the same in the newspapers,” he continued; “why the ‘sympathising gent.’ is the same with us as what in the newspapers is called “other intelligence (about any crime), to publish which might defeat the ends of justice.” That means, they know nothing at all about it, and can’t so much as venture on a guess. I’ve known a little about it for the papers, sir,—it doesn’t matter in what line.”

Some standing patterers are brought up to the business from childhood. Some take to it through loss of character, or through their inability to obtain a situation from intemperate habits, and some because “a free life suits me best.” In a former inquiry into a portion of this subject, I sought a standing patterer, whom I found in a threepenny lodging-house in Mint-street, Southwark. On my inquiring what induced him to adopt, or pursue, that line of life, he said:—

“It was distress that first drove me to it. I had learnt to make willow bonnets, but that branch of trade went entirely out. So, having a wife and children, I was drove to write out a paper that I called ‘The People’s Address to the King on the Present State of the Nation.’ I got it printed, and took it into the streets and sold it. I did very well with it, and made 5s. a day while it lasted. I never was brought up to any mechanical trade. My father was a clergyman” [here he cried bitterly]. “It breaks my heart when I think of it. I have as good a wife as ever lived, and I would give the world to get out of my present life. It would be heaven to get away from the place where I am. I am obliged to cheer up my spirits. If I was to give way to it, I shouldn’t live long. It’s like a little hell to be in the place where we live” [crying], “associated with the ruffians that we are. My distress of mind is awful, but it won’t do to show it at my lodgings—they’d only laugh to see me down-hearted; so I keep my trouble all to myself. Oh, I am heartily sick of this street work—the insults I have to put up with—the drunken men swearing at me. Yes, indeed, I am heartily sick of it.”

This poor man had some assistance forwarded to him by benevolent persons, after his case had appeared in my letter in the Morning Chronicle. This was the means of his leaving the streets, and starting in the “cloth-cap trade.” He seemed a deserving man.

Experience of a Standing Patterer.

From one of this body I received, at the period just alluded to, the following information:—

“I have taken my 5s. a day (said my informant); but ‘paper’ selling now isn’t half so good as it used to be. People haven’t got the money to lay out; for it all depends with the working man. The least we take in a day is, upon an average, sixpence; but taking the good and bad together, I should say we take about 10s. a week. I know there’s some get more than that, but then there’s many take less. Lately, I know, I haven’t taken 9s. a week myself, and people reckon me one of the best patterers in the trade. I’m reckoned to have the gift—that is, the gift of the gab. I never works a last dying speech on any other than the day of execution—all the edge is taken off of it after that. The last dying speeches and executions are all printed the day before. They’re always done on the Sunday, if the murderers are to be hung on the Monday. I’ve been and got them myself on the Sunday night, over and over again. The flying stationers goes with the papers in their pockets, and stand under the drop, and as soon as ever it falls, and long before the breath is out of the body, they begin bawling out.” [Here my informant gave a further account of the flying stationers under the gallows, similar to what I have given. He averred that they “invented every lie likely to go down.”] “‘Here you have also an exact likeness,’ they say, ‘of the murderer, taken at the bar of the Old Bailey!’ when all the time it is an old wood-cut that’s been used for every criminal for the last forty years. I know the likeness that was given of Hocker was the one that was given for Fauntleroy; and the wood-cut of Tawell was one that was given for the Quaker that had been hanged for forgery twenty years before. Thurtell’s likeness was done expressly for the ‘papers;’ and so was the Mannings’ and Rush’s likenesses too. The murders are bought by men, women, and children. Many of the tradespeople bought a great many of the affair of the Mannings. I went down to Deptford with mine, and did uncommonly well. I sold all off. Gentlefolks won’t have anything to do with murders sold in the street; they’ve got other ways of seeing all about it. We lay on the horrors, and picture them in the highest colours we can. We don’t care what’s in the ‘papers’ in our hands. All we want to do is to sell ’em; and the more horrible we makes the affairs, the more sale we have. We do very well with ‘love-letters.’ They are ‘cocks;’ that is, they are all fictitious. We give it out that they are from a tradesman in the neighbourhood, not a hundred yards from where we are a-standing. Sometimes we say it’s a well-known sporting butcher; sometimes it’s a highly respectable publican—just as it will suit the tastes of the neighbourhood. I got my living round Cornwall for one twelvemonth with nothing else than a love-letter. It was headed, ‘A curious and laughable love-letter and puzzle, sent by a sporting gentleman to Miss H—s—m, in this neighbourhood;’ that suits any place that I may chance to be in; but I always patter the name of the street or village where I may be. This letter, I say, is so worded, that had it fallen into the hands of her mamma or papa, they could not have told what it meant; but the young lady, having so much wit, found out its true meaning, and sent him an answer in the same manner. You have here, we say, the number of the house, the name of the place where she lives (there is nothing of the kind, of course), and the initials of all the parties concerned. We dare not give the real names in full, we tell them; indeed, we do all we can to get up the people’s curiosity. I did very well with the ‘Burning of the House of Commons.’ I happened by accident to put my pipe into my pocket amongst some of my papers, and burnt them. Then, not knowing how to get rid of them, I got a few straws. I told the people that my burnt papers were parliamentary documents that had been rescued from the flames, and that, as I dare not sell them, I would let them have a straw for a penny, and give them one of the papers. By this trick I got rid of my stock twice as fast, and got double the price that I should have done. The papers had nothing at all to do with the House of Commons. Some was ‘Death and the Lady,’ and ‘Death and the Gentleman,’ and others were the ‘Political Catechism,’ and 365 lies, Scotch, English, and Irish, and each lie as big round as St. Paul’s. I remember a party named Jack Straw, who laid a wager, half-a-gallon of beer, that he’d bring home the money for two dozen blank papers in one hour’s time. He went out into the Old-street-road, and began a patter about the political affairs of the nation, and Sir Robert Peel, and the Duke of Wellington, telling the public that he dared not sell his papers, they were treasonable; so he gave them with a straw—that he sold for one penny. In less than the hour he was sold clean out, and returned and drank the beer. The chief things that I work are quarter-sheets of recitations and dialogues. One is ‘Good Advice to Young Men on Choosing their Wives.’ I have done exceedingly well with that—it’s a good moral thing. Another is the ‘Drunkard’s Catechism;’ another is ‘The Rent Day; or, the Landlord gathering his Rents.’ This is a dialogue between the landlord and his tenant, beginning with ‘Good morning, Mrs. Longface; have you got my rent ready, ma’am?’ The next one is ‘The Adventures of Larry O’Flinn.’ It’s a comic story, and a very good got-up thing. Another is ‘A Hint to Husbands and Wives;’ and ‘A Pack of Cards turned into a Bible, a Prayer-book, and an Almanack.’ These cards belonged to Richard Middleton, of the 60th regiment of foot, who was taken a prisoner for playing at cards in church during divine service. But the best I do is ‘The Remarkable Dream of a Young Man of loose character, who had made an agreement to break into a gentleman’s house at twelve at night on Whitsun Monday, but, owing to a little drink that he took, he had a remarkable dream, and dreamed he was in hell. The dream had such influence on his mind that he refused to meet his comrade. His comrade was taken up for the burglary, found guilty, and executed for it. This made such an impression on the young man’s mind that he became a reformed character.’ There is a very beautiful description of hell in this paper,” said my informant, “that makes it sell very well among the old women and the apprentice lads, for the young man was an apprentice himself. It’s all in very pretty poetry, and a regular ‘cock.’ The papers that I work chiefly are what are called ‘the standing patters;’ they’re all of ’em stereotype, and some of them a hundred years old. We consider the ‘death hunters’ are the lowest grade in the trade. We can make most money of the murders while they last, but they don’t last, and they merely want a good pair of lungs to get them off. But it’s not every one, sir, that can work the standing patters. Many persons I’ve seen try at it and fail. One old man I knew tried the ‘Drunkard’s Catechism’ and the ‘Soldier’s Prayer-book and Bible.’ He could manage to patter these because they’ll almost work themselves; but ‘Old Mother Clifton’ he broke down in. I heard him do it in Sun-street and in the Blackfriars-road; but it was such a dreadful failure—he couldn’t humour it a bit—that, thinks I to myself, you’ll soon have to give up, and sure enough he’s never been to the printer’s since. He’d a very poor audience, chiefly boys and girls, and they were laughing at him because he made so many blunders in it. A man that’s never been to school an hour can go and patter a dying speech or ‘A Battle between Two Ladies of Fortune.’ They require no scholarship. All you want is to stick a picture on your hat, to attract attention, and to make all the noise you can. It’s all the same when they does an ‘Assassination of Louis Philippe,’ or a ‘Diabolical Attempt on the Life of the Queen’—a good stout pair of lungs and plenty of impudence is all that is required. But to patter ‘Bounce, the Workhouse Beadle, and the Examination of the Paupers before the Poor-law Commissioners,’ takes a good head-piece and great gift of the gab, let me tell you. It’s just the same as a play-actor. I can assure you I often feel very nervous. I begin it, and walk miles before I can get confidence in myself to make the attempt. I got rid of two quire last night. I was up among the gentlemen’s servants in Crawford-street, Baker-street, and I had a very good haul out of the grown-up people. I cleared 1s. 8d. altogether. I did that from seven till nine in the evening. It’s all chance-work. If it’s fine, and I can get a crowd of grown-up people round me, I can do very well, but I can’t do anything amongst the boys. There’s very little to be done in the day-time. I begin at ten in the day, and stop out till one. After that I starts off again at five, and leaves off about ten at night. Marylebone, Paddington, and Westminster I find the best places. The West-end is very good the early part of the week, for any thing that’s genteel, such as the ‘Rich Man and his Wife quarrelling because they have no Family.’ Our customers there are principally the footmen, the grooms, and the maid-servants. The east end of the town is the best on Friday and Saturday evenings. I very often go to Limehouse on Friday evening. Most part of the dock-men are paid then, and anything comic goes off well among them. On Saturdays I go to the New-cut, Ratcliff-highway, the Brill, and such places. I make mostly 2s. clear on a Saturday night. After nineteen years’ experience of the patter and paper line in the streets, I find that a foolish nonsensical thing will sell twice as fast as a good moral sentimental one; and, while it lasts, a good murder will cut out the whole of them. It’s the best selling thing of any. I used at one time to patter religious tracts in the street, but I found no encouragement. I did the ‘Infidel Blacksmith’—that would not sell. ‘What is Happiness? a Dialogue between Ellen and Mary’—that was no go. No more was the ‘Sorrows of Seduction.’ So I was driven into the comic standing patters.”

The more recent “experiences” of standing patterers, as they were detailed to me, differ so little in subject, or anything else, from what I have given concerning running patterers, that to cite them would be a repetition.

From the best information to be obtained, I have no doubt that there are always at least 20 standing patterers—sometimes they are called “boardmen”—at work in London. Some of them “run” occasionally, but an equal number or more, of the regular “runners” resort now and then to the standing patter, so the sum is generally kept up.

Notwithstanding the drawbacks of bad weather, which affects the standing, and does not affect the running, patterer; and notwithstanding the more frequent interruptions of the police, I am of opinion that the standing patterer earns on an average 1s. a week more than his running brother. His earnings too are often all his own; whereas the runners are a ‘school,’ and, their gains divided. More running patterers become, on favourable occasions, stationary, with boards, perhaps in the proportion of five to four, than the stationary become itinerant. One standing patterer told me, that, during the excitement about the Sloanes, he cleared full 3s. a day for more than a week; but at other times he had cleared only 1s. 6d. in a whole week, and he had taken nothing when the weather was too wet for the standing work, and there was nothing up to “run” with.

If, then, 20 standing patterers clear 10s. weekly, each, the year through—“taking” 15s. weekly—we find that 780l. is yearly expended in the standing patter of London streets.

The capital required for the start of the standing is greater than that needed by the running patterer. The painting for a board costs 3s. 6d.; the board and pole, with feet, to which it is attached, 5s. 6d.; and stock-money, 2s.; in all, 11s.

Of Political Litanies, Dialogues, etc.

To “work a litany” in the streets is considered one of the higher exercises of professional skill on the part of the patterer. In working this, a clever patterer—who will not scruple to introduce anything out of his head which may strike him as suitable to his audience—is very particular in his choice of a mate, frequently changing his ordinary partner, who may be good “at a noise” or a ballad, but not have sufficient acuteness or intelligence to patter politics as if he understood what he was speaking about. I am told that there are not twelve patterers in London whom a critical professor of street elocution will admit to be capable of ‘working a catechism’ or a litany. “Why, sir,” said one patterer, “I’ve gone out with a mate to work a litany, and he’s humped it in no time.” To ‘hump,’ in street parlance, is equivalent to ‘botch,’ in more genteel colloquialism. “And when a thing’s humped,” my informant continued, “you can only ‘call a go.’” To ‘call a go,’ signifies to remove to another spot, or adopt some other patter, or, in short, to resort to some change or other in consequence of a failure.

An elderly man, not now in the street trade, but who had “pattered off a few papers” some years ago, told me that he had heard three or four old hands—“now all dead, for they’re a short-lived people”—talk of the profits gained and the risk ran by giving Hone’s parodies on the Catechism, Litany, St. Athanasius’ Creed, &c. in the streets, after the three consecutive trials and the three acquittals of Hone had made the parodies famous and Hone popular. To work them in the streets was difficult, “for though,” said my informant, “there was no new police in them days, there was plenty of officers and constables ready to pull the fellows up, and though Hone was acquitted, a beak that wanted to please the high dons, would find some way of stopping them that sold Hone’s things in the street, and so next to nothing could be done that way, but a little was done.” The greatest source of profit, I learned from the reminiscences of the same man, was in the parlours and tap-rooms of public-houses, where the patterers or reciters were well paid “for going through their catechisms,” and sometimes, that there might be no interruption, the door was locked, and even the landlord and his servants excluded. The charge was usually 2d. a copy, but 1d. was not refused.

During Queen Caroline’s trial there were the like interruptions and hindrances to similar performances; and the interruptions continued during the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Bill until about the era of the Reform Bill, and then the hindrance was but occasional. “And perhaps it was our own fault, sir,” said one patterer, “that we was then molested at all in the dialogues and catechisms and things; but we was uncommon bold, and what plenty called sarcy, at that time: we was so.”

Thus this branch of a street profession continued to be followed, half surreptitiously, until after the subsidence of the political ferment consequent on the establishment of a new franchise and the partial abolition of an old one. The calling, however, has never been popular among street purchasers, and I believe that it is sometimes followed by a street-patterer as much from the promptings of the pride of art as from the hope of gain.

The street-papers in the dialogue form have not been copied nor derived from popular productions—but even in the case of Political Litanies and Anti-Corn-law Catechisms and Dialogues are the work of street authors.

One intelligent man told me, that properly to work a political litany, which referred to ecclesiastical matters, he “made himself up,” as well as limited means would permit, as a bishop! and “did stunning, until he was afraid of being stunned on skilly.” Of the late papers on the subject of the Pope, I cite the one which was certainly the best of all that appeared, and concerning which indignant remonstrances were addressed to some of the newspapers. The “good child” in the patter, was a tall bulky man; the examiner (also the author), was rather diminutive:—