The street purveyors of corn-salve, or corn-plaster, for I heard both words used, are not more than a dozen in number; but, perhaps, none depend entirely upon the sale of corn-salve for a living. As is the wont of the pattering class to which they belong, these men make rounds into the country and into the suburbs, but there are sometimes, on one day, a dozen “working the main drags” (chief thoroughfares) of London: there are no women in the trade. The salve is most frequently carried on a small tray, slung in front of the street professional; but sometimes it is sold at a small stall or stand. Oxford-street, Holborn, Tottenham-court-road, and Whitechapel, are favourite localities for these traders; as are Blackfriars-road and Newington-causeway on the Surrey side of the Thames. On the Saturday evening the corn-salve sellers resort to the street markets.
The patter of these traders is always to the same purport (however differently expressed)—the long-tested efficacy and the unquestionable cheapness of their remedies. The vendors are glib and unhesitating; but some, owing, I imagine, to a repetition of the same words, as they move from one part of a thoroughfare to another, or occupy a pitch, have acquired a monotonous tone, little calculated to impress a street audience—to effect which a man must be, or appear to be, in earnest. The patter of one of these dealers, who sells corn-salve on fine evenings, and works the public-houses, “with anything likely,” on wet evenings, is, from his own account, in the following words:—
“Here you have a speedy remedy for every sort of corn! Your hard corn, soft corn, blood corn, black corn, old corn, new corn, wart, or bunion, can be safely cured in three days! Nothing further to do but spread this salve on a piece of glove-leather, or wash-leather, and apply it to the place. Art and nature does the rest. Either corns, warts, or bunions, cured for one penny.”
This, however, is but as the announcement of the article on sale, and is followed by a recapitulation of the many virtues of that peculiar recipe; but, as regards the major part of these street-traders, the recapitulation is little more than a change of words, if that. There are, however, one and sometimes two patterers, of acknowledged powers, who every now and then sell corn-salve—for the restlessness of this class of people drives them to incessant changes in their pursuits—and their oratory is of a higher order. One of the men in question speaks to the following purport:—
“Here you are! here you are! all that has to complain of corns. As fast as the shoemaker lames you, I’ll cure you. If it wasn’t for me he dursn’t sing at his work; bless you, but he knows I’ll make his pinching easy to you. Hard corn, soft corn, any corn—sold again! Thank you, sir, you’ll not have to take a ’bus home when you’ve used my corn-salve, and you can wear your boots out then; you can’t when you’ve corns. Now, in this little box you see a large corn which was drawn by this very salve from the honourable foot of the late lamented Sir Robert Peel. It’s been in my possession three years and four months, and though I’m a poor man—hard corn, soft corn, or any corn—though I’m a poor man, the more’s the pity, I wouldn’t sell that corn for the newest sovereign coined. I call it the free-trade corn, gen’l’men and leddis. No cutting and paring, and sharpening penknives, and venturing on razors to level your corns; this salve draws them out—only one penny—and without pain. But wonders can’t be done in a moment. To draw out such a corn as I’ve shown you, the foot, the whole foot, must be soaked five minutes in warm soap and water. That makes the salve penetrate, and draw the corn, which then falls out, in three days, like a seed from a flower. Hard corn, soft corn, &c., &c.”
The corn from “the honourable foot” of Sir Robert Peel, or from the foot of any one likely to interest the audience, has been scraped and trimmed from a cow’s heel, and may safely be submitted to the inspection and handling of the incredulous. “There it is,” the corn-seller will reiterate—“it speaks for itself.”
One practice—less common than it was, however,—of the corn-salve street-seller, is to get a friend to post a letter—expressive of delighted astonishment at the excellence and rapidity of the corn-cure—at some post-office not very contiguous. If the salve-seller be anxious to remove the corns of the citizens, he displays this letter, with the genuine post-mark of Piccadilly, St. James’s-street, Pall-mall, or any such quarter, to show how the fashionable world avails itself of his wares, cheap as they are, and fastidious as are the fashionable! If the street-professional be offering his corn-cures in a fashionable locality, he produces a letter from Cheapside, or Cornhill—“there it is, it speaks for itself”—to show how the shrewd city-people, who were never taken in by street-sellers in their lives, and couldn’t be, appreciated that particular corn-salve! Occasionally, as the salve-seller is pattering, a man comes impetuously forward, and says loudly, “Here, doctor, let me have a shilling’s-worth. I bought a penn’orth, and it cured one corn by bringing it right out—here the d——d thing is, it troubled me seven year—and I’ve got other corns, and I’m determined I’ll root out the whole family of them. Come, now, look sharp, and put up a shilling’s-worth.” The shilling’s-worth is gravely handed to the applicant as if it were not only a boná fide, but an ordinary occurrence in the way of business.
One corn-salve seller—who was not in town at the time of my inquiry into this curious matter—had, I was assured, “and others might have” full faith in the efficacy of the salve he vended. One of his fellow-traders said to me, “Ay, sir, and he has good reason for trusting to it for a cure; he cured me of my corns, that I’m sure of; so there can be no nonsense about it. He has a secret.” On my asking this informant if he had tried his own corn-salve, he laughed, and said “No! I’m like the regular doctors that way, never tries my own things.” The same man, who had no great faith in what he sold being of any use in the cure of “corn, wart, or bunion,” assured me—and I have no doubt with truth—that he had sold his remedy to persons utter strangers to him, who had told him afterwards that it had cured their corns. “False relics,” says a Spanish proverb, “have wrought true miracles,” and to what cause these corn-cures were attributable, it is not my business to inquire.
I had no difficulty in acquiring a knowledge of the ingredients of a street corn-salve. “Anybody,” said one man, “that understands how to set about it, can get the recipe for 2d.” Resin, 1 lb., (costing 2d.); tallow, ¼ lb. (1½d.); emerald green (1d.); all boiled together. The emerald green, I was told, was to “give it a colour.” The colour is varied, but I have cited the most usual mode of preparation. Attempts have been made to give an aromatic odour to the salve, but all the perfumes within the knowledge, or rather the means, of the street-sellers, were overpowered by the resin and the tallow, “and it has,” remarked one dealer, “a physicky sort of smell as it is, which answers.” The quantity I have cited would supply a sufficiency of the composition for the taking of “a sovereign in penn’orths.” In a week or so the stuff becomes discoloured, often from dust, and has to be re-boiled. Some of the traders illustrate the mode of applying the salve by carrying a lighted candle, and a few pieces of leather, and showing how to soften the composition and spread it on the leather. “After all, sir,” said the man, who had faith in the virtues of his fellow street-trader’s salve, “the regular thing, such as I sell, may do good; I cannot say; but it is very likely that the resin will draw the corn, just as people apply cobbler’s wax, which has resin in it. The chemists will sell you something of the same sort as I do.”
The principal purchasers are working men, who buy in the streets, and occasionally in the public-houses. The trade, however, becomes less and less remunerative. To take 15s. in a week is a good week, and to take 10s. is more usual; the higher receipt is no doubt attributable to a superior patter being used, as men will give 1d. to be amused by this street work, without caring about the nostrum. Calculating that eight of these traders take 10s. weekly—so allowing for the frequent resort of the patterers to anything more attractive—we find 208l. expended in the streets on this salve. The profits of the seller are about the same as his receipts, for 240 pennyworths can be made out of materials costing only 4½d. The further outlay necessary to this street profession is a tray worth 1s. or 1s. 6d., but a large old backgammon board, which may be bought at the second-hand shops for 1s. and sometimes for 6d., is more frequently used by the street purveyors of corn-salve.
The sale of glass and china cement is an old trade in the streets, but one which becomes less and less followed. Before the finer articles of crockeryware became cheap as they are now, it was of importance to mend, if possible, a broken dish of better quality, and of more importance to mend a china punch-bowl. Dishes, however, are now much cheaper, and china punch-bowls are no longer an indispensable part of even tavern festivity.
The sellers of this cement proclaim it as one which will “cure any china, stone, or earthenware, and make the broken parts adhere so firmly, that if you let it fall again, it will break, not at the part where it has been cemented, but at some other. Only a halfpenny, or a penny a stick.” These traders sometimes illustrate the adhesive strength of the composition by producing a plate or dish which has been cemented in different places, and letting it fall, to break in some hitherto sound part. This they usually succeed in doing. For the cementing of glass the street article is now perhaps never sold, and was but scantily sold, I am informed, at any time, as the junction was always unsightly.
There are now four men who sell this cement in the streets, one usually to be found in Wilderness-row, Goswell-street, being, perhaps, the one who carries on the trade most regularly. They all make their own cement; one of the receipts being—1 lb. shellac (5d.), ¼ lb. brimstone (½d.), blended together until it forms a thick sort of glue. This quantity makes half-a-crown’s-worth of the cement for the purposes of retail. The sellers do not confine themselves to one locality, but are usually to be found in one or other of the street-markets on a Saturday night. If each seller take 5s. weekly (of which 4s. may be profit), we find 52l. expended yearly by street customers in this cement.
I include razor paste under this head, as sometimes, and at one time more frequently than now, the same individual sold both articles, though not at the same time.
There are twelve street-sellers of razor-paste, but they seem to prefer “working” the distant suburbs, or going on country rounds, as there are often only three in London. It is still vended, I am told, to clerks, who use it to sharpen their pen-knives, but the paste, owing to the prevalence of the use of steel pens, is now almost a superfluity, compared to what it was. It is bought also, and frequently enough in public-houses, by working men, as a means of “setting” their razors. The vendors make the paste themselves, except two, who purchase of a street-seller. The ingredients are generally fuller’s earth (1d.), hog’s lard (1d.), and emery powder (2d.). The paste is sold in boxes carried on a tray, which will close and form a sort of case, like a backgammon board. The quantity I have given will make a dozen boxes (each sold at 1d.), so that the profit is 7d. in the 1s., for to the 4d. paid for ingredients must be added 1d., for the cost of a dozen boxes. The paste is announced as “warranted to put an edge to a razor or pen-knife superior to anything ever before offered to the public.” The street-sellers offer to prove this by sharpening any gentleman’s pen-knife on the paste spread on a piece of soldier’s old belt, which sharpening, when required, they accomplish readily enough. One of these paste-sellers, I was told, had been apprenticed to a barber; another had been a cutler, the remainder are of the ordinary class of street-sellers.
Calculating that 6 men “work” the metropolis daily, taking 2s. each per day (with 1s. 2d. profit), we find 187l. the amount of the street outlay.
This trade, I am informed by persons familiar with it, would be much more frequently carried on by street-folk, and in much greater numbers, were it not the one which of all street callings finds the least toleration from the police. “You must keep your eyes on both corners of the street,” said one man, “when you sell crackers; and what good is it the police stopping us? The boys have only to go to a shop, and then it’s all right.”
The trade is only known in the streets at holiday seasons, and is principally carried on for a few days before and after the 5th of November, and again at Christmas-tide. “Last November was good for crackers,” said one man; “it was either Guy Faux day, or the day before, I’m not sure which now, that I took 15s., and nearly all of boys, for waterloo crackers and ball crackers (the common trade names), ‘waterloo’ being the ‘pulling crackers.’ At least three parts was ball crackers. I sold them from a barrow, wheeling it about as if it was hearthstone, and just saying quietly when I could, ‘Six a penny crackers.’ The boys soon tell one another. All sorts bought of me; doctors’ boys, school boys, pages, boys as was dressed beautiful, and boys as hadn’t neither shoes nor stockings. It’s sport for them all.” The same man told me he did well at what he called “last Poram fair,” clearing 13s. 6d. in three days, or rather evenings or nights. “Poram fair, sir,” he said, “is a sort of feast among the Jews, always three weeks I’ve heard, afore their Passover, and I then work Whitechapel and all that way.”
I inquired of a man who had carried on this street trade for a good many years, it might be ten or twelve, if he had noticed the uses to which his boy-customers put his not very innocent wares, and he entered readily into the subject.
“Why, sir,” he said, “they’re not all boy-customers, as you call them, but they’re far the most. I’ve sold to men, and often to drunken men. What larks there is with the ball-crackers! One man lost his eye at Stepney Fair, but that’s 6 or 7 years ago, from a lark with crackers. The rights of it I never exactly understood, but I know he lost his eye, from the dry gravel in the ball-cracker bouncing into it. But it’s the boys as is fondest of crackers. I sold ’em all last Christmas, and made my 5s. and better on Boxing-day. I was sold out before 6 o’clock, as I had a regular run at last—just altogether. After that, I saw one lad go quietly behind a poor lame old woman and pull a Waterloo close behind her ear; he was a biggish boy and tidily dressed; and the old body screamed, ‘I’m shot.’ She turned about, and the boy says, says he, ‘Does your grandmother know you’re out? It’s a improper thing, so it is, for you to be walking out by yourself.’ You should have seen her passion! But as she was screaming out, ‘You saucy wagabone! You boys is all wagabones. People can’t pass for you. I’ll give you in charge, I will,” the lad was off like a shot.
“But one of the primest larks I ever saw that way was last winter, in a street by Shoreditch. An old snob that had a bulk was making it all right for the night, and a lad goes up. I don’t know what he said to the old boy, but I saw him poke something, a last I think it was, against the candle, put it out, and then run off. In a minute, three or four lads that was ready, let fly at the bulk with their ball-crackers, and there was a clatter as if the old snob had tumbled down, and knocked his lasts down; but he soon had his head out—he was Irish, I think—and he first set up a roar like a Smithfield bull, and he shouts, ‘I’m kilt intirely wid the murthering pistols! Po-lice! Po-o-lice!’ He seemed taken quite by surprise—for they was capital crackers—I think he couldn’t have been used to bulks, or he would have been used to pelting; but how he did bellow, surely.
“I think it was that same night too, I saw a large old man, buttoned up, but seeming as if he was fine-dressed for a party, in a terrible way in the Commercial-road. I lived near there then. There was three boys afore me—and very well they did it—one of ’em throws a ball-cracker bang at the old gent’s feet, just behind him, and makes him jump stunning, and the boy walks on with his hands in his pocket, as if he know’d nothing about it. Just after that another boy does the same, and then the t’other boy; and the old gent—Lord, how he swore! It was shocking in such a respectable man, as I told him, when he said, I’d crackered him! ‘Me cracker you,’ says I; ‘it ’ud look better if you’d have offered to treat a poor fellow to a pint of beer with ginger in it, and the chill off, than talk such nonsense.’ As we was having this jaw, one of the boys comes back and lets fly again; and the old gent saw how it was, and he says, ‘Now, if you’ll run after that lad, and give him a d——d good hiding, you shall have the beer.’ ‘Money down, sir,’ says I, ‘if you mean honour bright;’ but he grumbled something, and walked away. I saw him soon after, talking to a Bobby, so I made a short cut home.”
At the fairs near London there is a considerable sale of these combustibles; and they are often displayed on large stalls in the fair. They furnish the means of practical jokes to the people on their return. “After last Whitsun Greenwich Fair,” said a street-seller to me, “I saw a gent in a white choker, like a parson, look in at a pastry-cook’s shop, as is jist by the Elephant (and Castle), a-waiting for a ’bus, I s’pose. There was an old ’oman with a red face standing near him; and I saw a lad, very quick, pin something to one’s coat and the t’other’s gown. They turned jist arter, and bang goes a Waterloo, and they looks savage one at another; and hup comes that indentical boy, and he says to the red faced ’oman, a pointing to the white choker, ‘Marm, I seed him a twiddling with your gown. He done it for a lark arter the fair, and ought to stand something.’ So the parson, if he were a parson, walked away.”
There are eight makers, I am told, who supply the street-sellers and the small shops with these crackers. The wholesale price is 4d. to 6d. a gross, the “cracker-balls” being the dearest. The retail price in the streets is from six to twelve a penny, according to the appearance and eagerness of the purchaser. Some street traders carry these commodities on trays, and very few are stationary, except at fairs. I am assured, that for a few days last November, from 50 to 60 men and women were selling crackers in the streets, of course “on the sly.” In so irregular and surreptitious a trade, it is not possible even to approximate to statistics. The most intelligent man that I met with, acquainted, as he called it, “with all the ins and outs of the trade,” calculated that in November and Christmas, 100l. at least was expended in the streets in these combustibles, and another 100l. in the other parts of the year. About Tower-hill, Ratcliff-highway (or “the Highway,” as street-sellers often call it), and in Wapping and Shadwell, the sale of crackers is the best. The sellers are the ordinary street-sellers, and no patter is required.
Under this head I shall speak only of those who sell the matches, apart from those who, in proffering lucifer boxes, mix up trade with mendicancy. The latter class I have spoken of, and shall treat of them more fully under the head of “the London Poor.”
Until “lucifers” became cheap and in general use, the matches sold by the street-folks, and there were numbers in the trade, were usually prepared by themselves. The manufactures were simple enough. Wooden splints, twice or thrice the length of the lucifer matches now in use, were prepared, and dipped into brimstone, melted in an iron ladle. The matches were never, as now, self-igniting, or rather ignitable by rapid friction; but it was necessary to “strike a light” by the concussion of a flint and steel, the sparks from which were communicated to tinder kept in a “box.”
The brimstone match-sellers were of all ages, but principally, I am told, old people. Many of them during, and for some years after the war, wore tattered regimentals, or some remains of military paraphernalia, and had been, or assumed to have been, soldiers, but not entitled to a pension; the same with seamen. I inquired of some of the present race of match-sellers what became of the “old brimstones,” as I heard them called, but from them I could gain little information. An old groundsel-gatherer told me that some went into his trade. Others, I learned, “took to pins,” and others to song or tract selling. Indeed the brimstone match-sellers not unfrequently carried a few songs to vend with their matches. It must be borne in mind that, 15 years ago, those street trades, into which any one who is master of a few pence can now embark, were less numerous. Others of the match-sellers, with rounds, or being known men, displaced their “brimstones” for “lucifers,” and traded on as usual. I heard of one old man, now dead, who made a living on brimstone-matches by selling a good quantity in Hackney, Stoke Newington, and Islington, and who long refused to sell lucifer-matches; “they was new-fangled rubbish,” he said, “and would soon have their day.” He found his customers, however, fall off, and in apprehension of losing them all, he was compelled to move with the times.
“I believe, sir,” said one man, still a street-seller, but not having sold matches of any kind for years,—“I believe I was the first who hawked ‘Congreves,’ or ‘instantaneous lights;’ they weren’t called ‘lucifers’ for a good while after. I bought them at Mr. Jones’s light-house in the Strand, and if I remember right, for it must be more than 20 years ago, between 1820 and 1830, Mr. Jones had a patent somehow about them. I bought them at 7s. a dozen boxes, and sold them at 1s. a box. I’m not sure how many matches was in a box, but I think it was 100. You’ll get as much for a farthing now, as you would for a shilling then. The matches were lighted by being drawn quickly through sand-paper. I sold them for a twelvemonth, and had the trade all to myself. As far as I know, I had; for I never met with or heard of anybody else in it all that time. I did decent at it. I suppose I cleared my 15s. a week. The price kept the same while I was in the business. I sold them at city offices. I supplied the Phœnix in Lombard-street, I remember, and the better sort of shops. People liked them when they wanted to light a candle in a hurry, in places where there was no fire to seal a letter, or such like. There was no envelopes in them days. The penny-postage brought them in. I was sometimes told not to carry such things there again, as they didn’t want the house set on fire by keeping such dangerous things in it. Now, I suppose, lucifers are in every house, and that there’s not a tinder-box used in all London.” Such appears to have been the beginning of the extensive street-trade in these chemical preparations now carried on. At the twelvemonth’s end, my informant went into another line of business.
The “German Congreves” were soon after introduced, and were at first sold wholesale at the “English and German” swag-shops in Houndsditch, at 2s. the dozen boxes, and were retailed at 3d., 4d., and sometimes as high as 6d. the box. These matches, I am told, “kept their hold” about five years, when they ceased to be a portion of the street trade. The German Congreves were ignited by being drawn along a slip of sand-paper, at the bottom of the box, as is done at present; with some, however, a double piece of sand-paper was sold for purposes of igniting.
After this time cheaper and cheaper matches were introduced, and were sold in the streets immediately on their introduction. At first, the cheaper matches had an unpleasant smell, and could hardly be kept in a bed-room, but that was obviated, and the trade progressed to its present extent.
The lucifer-match boxes, the most frequent in the street-trade, are bought by the poor persons selling them in the streets, at the manufacturers, or at oil-shops, for a number of oilmen buy largely of the manufacturers, and can “supply the trade” at the same rate as the manufacturer. The price is 2¼d. the dozen boxes, each box containing 150 matches. Some of the boxes (German made) are round, and many used to be of tin, but these are rarely seen now. The prices are proportionate. The common price of a lucifer box in the streets is ½d., but many buyers, I am told, insist upon and obtain three a penny, which they do generally of some one who supplies them regularly. The trade is chiefly itinerant.
One feeble old man gave me the following account of his customers. He had been in the employ of market-gardeners, carmen, and others, whose business necessitated the use of carts and horses. In his old age he was unable to do any hard work; he was assisted, however, by his family, especially by one son living in the country; he had a room in the house of a daughter, who was a widow, but his children were only working people, with families, he said, and so he sold a few lucifers “as a help,” and to have the comfort of a bit of tobacco, and buy an old thing in the way of clothing without troubling any one. Out of his earnings, too, he paid 6d. a week for the schooling of one of his daughter’s children.
“I sell these lucifers, sir,” he said, in answer to my inquiries, “I never beg with them: I’d scorn it. My children help me, as I’ve told you; I did my best for them when I was able, and so I have a just sort of claim on them. Well, indeed, then, sir, as you ask me, if I had only myself to depend upon, why I couldn’t live. I must beg or go into the house, and I don’t know which I should take to worst at 72. I’ve been selling lucifers about five years, for I was worn out with hard work and rheumatics when I was 65 or 66. I go regular rounds, about 2 miles in a day, or 2½, or if it’s fine 3 miles or more from where I live, and the same distance back, for I can sometimes walk middling if I can do nothing else. I carry my boxes tied up in a handkerchief, and hold 2 or 3 in my hand. I’m ashamed to hold them out on any rail where I aint known; and never do if there isn’t a good-humoured looking person to be seen below, or through the kitchen window. But my eyesight aint good, and I make mistakes, and get snapped up very short at times. Yesterday, now, I was lucky in my small way. There’s a gentleman, that if I can see him, I can always sell boxes to at 1d. a piece. That’s his price, he says, and he takes no change if I offer it. I saw him yesterday at his own door, and says he, ‘Well, old greybeard, I haven’t seen you for a long time. Here’s 1s., leave a dozen boxes.’ I told him I had only 11 left; but he said, ‘O, it’s all the same,’ and he told a boy that was crossing the hall to take them into the kitchen, and we soon could hear the housekeeper grumbling quite loud—perhaps she didn’t know her master could hear—about being bothered with rubbish that people took in master with; and the gentleman shouts out, ‘Some of you stop that old —— mouth, will you? She wants a profit out of them in her bills.’ All was quiet then, and he says to me quite friendly, ‘If she wasn’t the best cook in London I’d have quitted her long since, by G—.’” The old man chuckled no little as he related this; he then went on, “He’s a swearing man, but a good man, I’m sure, and I don’t know why he’s so kind to me. Perhaps he is to others. I’m ashamed to hold my boxes to the ary rails, ’cause so many does that to beg. I sell lucifers both to mistresses and maids. Some will have 3 for a 1d., and though it’s a poor profit, I do it, for they say, ‘O, if you come this way constant, we’ll buy of you whenever we want. If you won’t give 3 a penny, there’s plenty will.’ I sell, too, in some small streets, Lisson-grove way, to women that see me from their windows, and come down to the door. They’re needle-workers I think. They say sometimes, ‘I’m glad I’ve seen you, for it saves me the trouble of running out.’
“Well, sir, I’m sure I hardly know how many boxes I sell. On a middling good day I sell 2 dozen, on a good day 3 dozen, on a bad day not a dozen, sometimes not half-a-dozen, and sometimes, but not often, not more than a couple. Then in bad weather I don’t go out, and time hangs very heavy if it isn’t a Monday; for every Monday I buy a threepenny paper of a newsman for 2d., and read it as well as I can with my old eyes and glasses, and get my daughter to read a bit to me in the evening, and next day I send the paper to my son in the country, and so save him buying one. As well as I can tell I sell about 9 dozen boxes a week, one week with another, and clear from 2s. to 2s. 6d. It’s employment for me as well as a help.”
It is not easy to estimate the precise number of persons who really sell lucifer matches as a means of subsistence, or as a principal means. There are many, especially girls and women, the majority being Irishwomen, who do not directly solicit charity, and do not even say, “Buy a box of lucifers from a poor creature, to get her a ha’porth of bread;” or, “please a bit of broken victuals, if it’s only cold potatoes, for a box of the best lucifers.” Yet these match-sellers look so imploringly down an area, or through a window, some “shouldering” a young child the while, and remain there so pertinaciously that a box is bought, or a halfpenny given, often merely to get rid of the applicant.
An intelligent man, a street-seller, and familiar with street-trading generally, whom I questioned on the subject, said: “It’s really hard to tell, sir, but I should calculate this way. It’s the real sellers you ask about; them as tries to live on their selling lucifers, or as their main support. I have worked London and the outside places—yes, I mean the suburbs—in ten rounds, or districts, but six is better, for you can then go the same round the same day next week, and so get known. The real sellers, in my opinion, is old men and women out of employ, or past work, and to beg they are ashamed. I’ve read the Bible you see, sir, though I’ve had too much to do with gay persons even to go to church. I should say that in each of those ten rounds, or at any rate, splicing one with another, was twenty persons really selling lucifers. Yes, and depending a good deal upon them, for they’re an easy carriage for an infirm body, and as ready a sale as most things. I don’t reckon them as begs, or whines, or sticks to a house for an hour, but them as sells; in my opinion, they’re 200, and no more. All the others dodges, in one way or other, on pity and charity. There’s one lurk that’s getting common now. A man well dressed, and very clean, and wearing gloves, knocks at a door, and asks to speak to the master or mistress. If he succeeds, he looks about him as if he was ashamed, and then he pulls out of his coat-pocket a lucifer box or two, and asks, as a favour, to be allowed to sell one, as reduced circumstances drive him to do so. He doesn’t beg, but I don’t reckon him a seller, for he has always some story or other to tell, that’s all a fakement.” Most dwellers in a suburb will have met with one of these well-dressed match-sellers.
Adopting my informant’s calculation, and supposing that each of these traders take, on lucifers alone, but 4s. weekly, selling nine dozen (with a profit to the seller of from 1s. 9d. to 2s. 6d.), we find 2080l. expended in this way. The matches are sold also at stalls, with other articles, in the street markets, and elsewhere; but this traffic, I am told, becomes smaller, and only amounts to one-tenth of the amount I have specified as taken by itinerants. These street-sellers reside in all parts of town which I have before specified as the quarters of the poor.
This is one of the employments to which boys, whom neglect, ill-treatment, destitution, or a vagrant disposition, have driven or lured to a street life, seem to resort to almost as readily as to the offers, “Old your ’os, sir?” “Shall I carry your passel, marm?”
The trifling capital required to enter into the business is one cause of its numbering many followers. The “fuzees,” as I most frequently heard them called, are sold at the “Congreve shops,” and are chiefly German made. At one time, indeed, they were announced as “German tinder.” The wholesale charge is 4½d. per 1000 “lights.” The 1000 lights are apportioned into fifty rows, each of twenty self-igniting matches; and these “rows” are sold in the streets, one or two for ½d., and two, three, or four 1d. It is common enough for a juvenile fuzee-seller to buy only 500; so that 2¼d. supplies his stock in trade.
The boys (for the majority of the street-traders who sell only fuzees, are boys) frequent the approaches to the steam-boat piers, the omnibus stands, and whatever places are resorted to by persons who love to smoke in the open air. Some of these young traders have neither shoes nor stockings, more especially the Irish lads, who are at least half the number, and their apology for a cap fully displays the large red ears, and flat features, which seem to distinguish a class of the Irish children in the streets of London. Some Irish boys hold out their red-tipped fuzees with an appealing look, meant to be plaintive, and say, in a whining tone, “Spend a halfpenny on a poor boy, your honour.” Others offer them, without any appealing look or tone, either in silence, or saying—“Buy a fuzee to light your pipe or cigar, sir; a row of lights for a ½d.”
I met with one Irish boy, of thirteen or fourteen years of age, who was offering fuzees to the persons going to Chalk Farm fair on Easter Tuesday, but the rain kept away many visitors, and the lad could hardly find a customer. He was literally drenched, for his skin, shining with the rain, could be seen about his arms and knees through the slits of his thin corduroy jacket and trowsers, and he wore no shirt.
“It’s oranges I sell in ginral, your honour,” he said, “and it’s on oranges I hopes to be next week, plaze God. But mother—it’s orange-selling she is too—wanted to make a grand show for Aister wake, and tuk the money to do it, and put me on the fuzees. It’s the thruth I’m telling your honour. She thought I might be after making a male’s mate” (meal’s meat) “out of them, intirely; but the sorra a male I’ll make to day if it cost me a fardin, for I haven’t tuk one. I niver remimber any fader; mother and me lives together somehow, glory be to God; but it’s often knowin’ what it is to be hungry we are. I’ve sould fuzees before, when ingans, and nuts, and oranges was dear and not for the poor to buy, but I niver did so bad as to-day. A gintleman once said to me: ‘Here, Pat, yer sowl, you look hungry. Here’s a thirteener for yez; go and get drunk wid it.’ Och, no, your honour, he wasn’t an Irish gintleman; it was afther mocking me he was, God save him.” On my asking the boy if he felt hurt at this mockery, he answered, slily, with all his air of simplicity, “Sure, thin, wasn’t there the shillin’? For it was a shillin’ he gave me, glory be to God. No, I niver heard it called a thirteener before, but mother has. Och, thin, sir, indeed, and it’s could and wet I am. I have a new shirt, as was giv to mother for me by a lady, but I wouldn’t put it on sich a day as this, your honour, sir. I’ll go to mass in it ivery Sunday. I’ve made 6d. a day and sometimes more a sellin’ fuzees, wid luck, God be praised, but the bad wither’s put me out intirely this time.”
The fuzee-sellers frequently offer their wares at the bars of public-houses in the daytime, and sometimes dispose of them to those landlords who sell cigars. From the best information I can command there are now upwards of 200 persons selling fuzees in the streets of the metropolis. But the trade is often collateral. The cigar-seller offers fuzees, play-bill sellers (boys) do so sometimes at the doors of the theatres to persons coming out, the pipe-sellers also carry them; they are sometimes sold along with lucifer matches, and at miscellaneous stalls. It will, I believe, be accurate to state that in the streets there are generally 100 persons subsisting, or endeavouring to subsist, on the sale of fuzees alone. It may be estimated also that each of these traders averages a receipt of 10d. a day (with a profit exceeding 6d.), so that 1300l. is yearly laid out in the streets in this way.
Of the fuzee-selling lads, those who are parentless, or runaway, sleep in the lodging-houses, in the better conducted of which the master or deputy takes charge of the stock of fuzees or lucifer-matches during the night to avert the risk of fire; in others these combustibles are stowed anywhere at the discretion, or indiscretion, of the lodgers.
There are many articles which, having become cheap in the shops, find their way to the street-traders, and after a brief, or comparatively brief, and prosperous trade has been carried on in them, gradually disappear. These are usually things which are grotesque or amusing, but of no utility, and they are supplanted by some more attractive novelty—a main attraction being that it is a novelty.
Among such matters of street-trade are the elastic toys called “gutta-percha heads;” these, however, have no gutta-percha in their composition, but consist solely of a composition made of glue and treacle—the same as is used for printer’s rollers. The heads are small coloured models of the human face, usually with projecting nose and chin, and wide or distorted mouth, which admit of being squeezed into a different form of features, their elasticity causing them to return to the original caste. The trade carried on in the streets in these toys was at one time extensive, but it seems now to be gradually disappearing. On a fine day a little after noon, last week, there was not one “head” exposed for sale in any of the four great street markets of Leather-lane, the Brill, Tottenham-court-road including the Hampstead-road, and High-street, Camden-town.
The trade became established in the streets upwards of two years ago. At first, I am told by a street-seller, himself one of the first, there were six “head-sellers,” who “worked” the parks and their vicinity. My informant one day sold a gross of heads in and about Hyde-park, and a more fortunate fellow-trader on the same day sold 1½ gross. The heads were recommended, whenever opportunity offered, by a little patter. “Here,” one man used to say, “here’s the Duke of Wellington’s head for 1d. It’s modelled from the statty on horseback, but is a improvement. His nose speaks for itself. Sir Robert Peel’s only 1d. Anybody you please is 1d.; a free choice and no favour. The Queen and all the Royal Family 1d. apiece.” As the street-seller offered to dispose of the model of any eminent man’s head and face, he held up some one of the most grotesque of the number. Another man one Saturday evening sold five or six dozen to costermongers and others in the street markets “pattering” them off as the likenesses of any policeman who might be obnoxious to the street-traders! This was when the trade was new. The number of sellers was a dozen in the second week; it was soon twenty-five, all confining themselves to the sale of the heads; besides these the heads were offered to the street-buying public by many of the stationary street-folk, whose stock partook of a miscellaneous character. The men carrying on this traffic were of the class of general street-sellers.
“The trade was spoiled, sir,” said an informant, “by so many going into it, but I’ve heard that it’s not bad in parts of the country now. The sale was always best in the parks, I believe, and Sundays was the best days. I don’t pretend to be learned about religion, but I know that many a time after I’d earned next to nothing in a wet week, it came a fine Sunday morning, and I took as much as got me and my wife and children a good dinner of meat and potatoes, and sometimes, when we could depend on it, smoking hot from the baker’s oven; and I then felt I had something to thank God for. You see, sir, when a man’s been out all the week, and often with nothing to call half a dinner, and his wife’s earnings only a few pence by sewing at home, with three young children to take care of, you’re nourished and comforted, and your strength keeps up, by a meat dinner on a Sunday, quietly in your own room. But them as eats their dinner without having to earn it, can’t understand about that, and as the Sunday park trade was stopped, the police drive us about like dogs, not gentlemen’s dogs, but stray or mad dogs. And it seems there’s some sort of a new police. I can’t understand a bit of it, and I don’t want to, for the old police is trouble enough.”
The gutta-percha heads are mostly bought at the “English and German” swag-shops. A few are made by the men who sell them in the streets. The “swag” price is 1s. the gross; at one time the swag man demurred to sell less than half a gross, but now when the demand is diminished, a dozen is readily supplied for 8d. The street price retail, is and always was 1d. a head. The principal purchasers in the street are boys and young men, with a few tradesmen or working people, “such as can afford a penny or two,” who buy the “gutta-percha” heads for their children. There used to be a tolerable trade in public houses, where persons enjoying themselves bought them “for a lark,” but this trade has now dwindled to a mere nothing. One of the “larks,” an informant knew to be practised, was to attach the head to a piece of paper or card, write upon it some one’s name, make it up into a parcel, and send it to the flattered individual. The same man had sold heads to young women, not servant-maids he thought, but in some not very ill paid employment, and he believed, from their manner when buying, for some similar purpose of “larking.” When the heads were a novelty, he sold a good many to women of the town.
There are now no street-folks who depend upon the sale of these gutta-percha heads, but they sell them occasionally. The usual mode is to display them on a tray, and now, generally with other things. One man showed me his box, which, when the lid was raised, he carried as a tray slung round his neck, and it contained gutta-percha heads, exhibition medals, and rings and other penny articles of jewellery.
There are at present, I am informed, 30 persons selling gutta-percha heads in the streets, some of them confining their business solely to those articles. In this number, however, I do not include those who are both makers and sellers. Their average receipts, I am assured, do not exceed 5s. a week each, for, though some may take 15s. a week, others, and generally the stationary head-sellers, do not take 1s. The profit to the street retailer is one third of his receipts. From this calculation it appears, that if the present rate of sale continue, 390l. is spent yearly in these street toys. At one time it was far more than twice the amount.
Fly-Papers came, generally, into street-traffic, I am informed, in the summer of 1848.
The fly-papers are sold wholesale at many of the oil-shops, but the principal shop for the supply of the street-traders is in Whitechapel. The wholesale price is 2¼d. a dozen, and the (street) retail charge ½d. a paper, or three 1d. A young man, to whom I was referred, and whom I found selling, or rather bartering, crockery, gave me the following account of his experience of the fly-paper trade. He was a rosy-cheeked, strong-built young fellow, and said he thought he was “getting on” in his present trade. He spoke merrily of his troubles, as I have found common among his class, when they are over.
“My father had a milk-walk,” he said, “and when he died I was without money and had nothing to do, but I soon got a place with a single gentleman. He had a small house, and kept only me and a old housekeeper. I was to make myself generally useful, but when I first went, the most I had to do was to look after a horse that master had. Master never was on horseback in his life, but he took Skipjack—that was the horse’s name, he was rising six—for a debt, and kept him two months, till he could sell him to his mind. Master took a largeish garden—for he was fond of growing flowers and vegetables, and made presents of them—just before poor Skipjack went, and I was set to work in it, besides do my house-work. It was a easy place, and I was wery comfable. But master, who was a good master and a friend to a poor man, as I know, got into difficulties; he was something in the City; I never understood what; and one night, when I’d been above a year and a-half with him, he told me I must go, for he couldn’t afford to keep me any longer. Next day he was arrested, quite sudden I believe, and sent to prison for debt. I had a good character, but nobody cared for one from a man in prison, and in a month my money was out, and my last 3s. 6d. went for an advertisement, what was no good to me. I then took to holding horses or anything that way, and used to sleep in the parks or by the road-sides where it was quiet. I did that for a month and more. I’ve sometimes never tasted food all day, and used to quench myself (so he worded it) with cold water from the pumps. It took off the hunger for a time. I got to know other boys that was living as I was, and when I could afford it I slept at lodging-houses, the boys took me to or told me about. One evening a gentleman gave me 1s. for catching his horse that he’d left standing, but it had got frightened, and run off. Next morning I went into the fly-paper trade,—it’s nearly two years ago, I think—because a boy I slept with did tidy in it. We bought the papers at the first shop as was open, and then got leave of the deputy of the lodging-house to catch all the flies we could, and we stuck them thick on the paper, and fastened the paper to our hats. I used to think, when I was in service, how a smart livery hat, with a cockade to it, would look, but instead of that I turned out, the first time in my life that ever I sold anything, with my hat stuck round with flies. I felt so ashamed I could have cried. I was miserable, I felt so awkerd. But I spent my last 2d. in some gin and milk to give me courage, and that brightened me up a bit, and I set to work. I went Mile-end way, and got out of the main streets, and I suppose I’d gone into streets and places where there hadn’t often been fly-papers before, and I soon had a lot of boys following me, and I felt, almost, as if I’d picked a pocket, or done something to be ’shamed of. I could hardly cry ‘Catch ’em alive, only a halfpenny!’ But I found I could sell my papers to public-houses and shopkeepers, such as grocers and confectioners, and that gave me pluck. The boys caught flies, and then came up to me, and threw them against my hat, and if they stuck the lads set up a shout. I stuck to the trade, however, and took 2s. 6d. to 3s. every day that week, more than half of it profit, and on Saturday I took 5s. 6d. The trade is all to housekeepers. I called at open shops and looked up at the windows, or held up my hat at private houses, and was sometimes beckoned to go in and sell my papers. Women bought most, I think. ‘Nasty things,’ they used to say, ‘there’s no keeping nothing clean for them.’ I stuck to the trade for near two months, and then I was worth 13s. 6d., and had got a pair of good shoes, and a good second-hand shirt, with one to change it; and next I did a little in tins and hardware, at the places where I used to go my fly rounds, and in the winter I got into the crock-trade, with another young fellow for a mate, and I’m in it yet, and getting a tidy connection, I think.”
Some of the fly-paper sellers make their stock-in-trade, but three-fourths of the number buy them ready-made. The street-sellers make them of old newspapers or other waste-paper, no matter how dirty. To the paper they apply turpentine and common coach varnish, some using resin instead of varnish, and occasionally they dash a few grains of sugar over the composition when spread upon the paper.
Last summer, I was informed, there were fifty or sixty persons selling fly-papers and beetle wafers in the streets; some of them boys, and all of them of the general class of street-sellers, who “take” to any trade for which 1s. suffices as capital. Their average earnings may be estimated at 2s. 6d. a day, about one-half being profit. This gives a street outlay, say for a “season” of ten weeks, of 375l., calculating fifty sellers.
A few of these street traders carried a side of a newspaper, black with flies, attached to a stick, waving it like a flag. The cries were “Catch ’em alive! Catch ’em alive for ½d.!” “New method of destroying thousands!”
In addition to the more staple wares which form the street trade in manufactured articles of a miscellaneous character, are many, as I said before, which have been popular for a while and are now entirely disused. In the course of my inquiry it was remarkable how oblivious I found many of the street-sellers as to what they had sold at various periods. “O dear, yes sir, I’ve sold all sorts of things in the streets besides what I’m on now; first one and then another as promised a few pence,” was the substance of a remark I frequently heard; but what was meant by the one and the other thing thus sold they had a difficulty to call to mind, but on a hint being thrown out they could usually give the necessary details. From the information I acquired I select the following curious matter.
Six or seven years ago Galvanic Rings were sold extensively by the street-folk. These were clumsy lead-coloured things, which were described by the puffing shop-keepers, and in due course by the street-sellers, as a perfect amulet; a thing which by its mere contact with the finger would not only cure but prevent “fits, rheumatics, and cramps.” On my asking a man who had sold them if these were all the ailments of which he and the others proclaimed the galvanic rings an infallible cure, he answered: “Like the quack medicines you read about, sir, in ’vertisements, we said they was good for anything anybody complained of or was afraid was coming on them, but we went mostly for rheumatics. A sight of tin some of the shopkeepers must have made, for what we sold at 1d. they got 6d. a piece for. Then for gold galvanics—and I’ve been told they was gilt—they had 10s. 6d. each. The streets is nothing to the shops on a dodge. I’ve been told by people as I’d sold galvanics to, that they’d had benefit from them. I suppose that was just superstitious. I think Hyams did the most of any house in galvanics.”
The men selling these rings—for the business was carried on almost entirely by men—were the regular street-traders, who sell “first one thing and then another.” They were carried in boxes, as I have shown medals are now, and they generally formed a portion of the street-jeweller’s stock, whether he were itinerant or stationary. The purchasers were labourers in the open air, such as those employed about buildings, whose exposure to the alternations of heat and cold render them desirous of a cure for, or preventive against rheumatism. The costermongers were also purchasers, and in the course of my inquiries among that numerous body, I occasionally saw a galvanic ring still worn by a few, and those chiefly, I think, fish-sellers.
Nor was the street or shop trade in these galvanic rings confined to amulets for the finger. I heard of one elderly woman, then a prosperous street-seller in the New Cut, who slept with a galvanic ring on every toe, she suffered so much from cramp and rheumatism! There were also galvanic shields, which were to be tied round the waist, and warranted “to cure all over.” They were retailed at 6d. each. Galvanic earrings were likewise a portion of this manufacture. They were not “drops” from the ear, but filled behind and around it as regards the back of the skull, and were to avert rheumatic attacks, and even aching from the head. The street price was 1s. the pair. Galvanic bracelets, handsomely gilt, were 2s. 6d. the pair. But the sale of all these higher-priced charms was a mere nonentity compared to that of the penny rings.
Another trade—if it may be classed under this head—carried on by great numbers and with great success for a while, was that of cards with the Lord’s Prayer in the compass of a sixpence. This was an engraving—now and then offered in the streets still—strictly fulfilling the announcement as to the compass in which the Prayer was contained, with the addition of a drawing of the Bible, as part of the engraving, “within the sixpence.” This trade was at first, I am told, chiefly in the hands of the patterers: “Grand novelty!” they said; “splendid engraving! The Lord’s Prayer, with a beautiful picture of the Bible, all legible to the naked eye, in the compass of a sixpence. Five hundred letters, all clear, on a sixpence.” One man said to me: “I knew very well there wasn’t 500, but it was a neat number to cry. A schoolmaster said to me once—‘Why, there isn’t above half that number of letters.’ He was wrong though; for I believe there’s 280.” This card was published six or seven years ago, and the success attending the sale of the Lord’s Prayer, led to the publication of the Belief in the same form. “When the trade was new,” said one man, “I could sell a gross in a day without any very great trouble; but in a little time there was hundreds in the trade, and one might patter hard to sell four dozen.”
The wholesale price was 8s. the gross, and as thirteen cards went to the dozen, the day’s profit when a gross was sold was 5s. When the sale did not extend to beyond four dozen the profit was 1s. 8d. A few cards “in letters of gold” were vended in the streets at 6d. each. They had large margins and presented a handsome appearance. The wholesale price was 3s. 6d. the dozen.
When this trade was at its height, there were, I am told, from 500 to 700 men, women and children engaged in it; selling the cards both with and without other articles. The cards had also a very extensive sale in the country.
Pen-holders with glass or china handles are another commodity which appeared suddenly, about six months ago, in street commerce, and at once became the staple of a considerable traffic. These pens are eight or nine inches long, the “body,” so to speak, being of solid round glass, of almost all colours, green, blue, and black predominating, with a seal (lacquered white or yellow) at the top, and a holder of the usual kind, with a steel pen at the bottom. Some are made of white pot and called “China pens,” and of these some are ornamented with small paintings of flowers and leaves. These wares are German, and were first charged 9s. 6d. the gross, without pens, which were an additional 3d. at the swag-shops. The price is now 5s. the gross, the pens being the same. The street-sellers who were fortunate enough to “get a good start” with these articles did exceedingly well. The pen-holders, when new, are handsome-looking, and at 1d. each were cheap; some few were at first retailed at 2d. One man, I am told, sold two-and-a-half gross in one day in the neighbourhood of the Bank, purchasers not seldom taking a dozen or more. As the demand continued, some men connected with the supply of goods for street sale, purchased all the stock in the swag-shops, expending about 170l., and at once raised the price to 10s. 6d. the gross. This amount the poorer street-sellers demurred to give, as they could rarely obtain a higher price than 1d. each, and 2d. for the ornamented holders, but the street-stationers (who bought, however, very sparingly) and the small shopkeepers gave the advance “as they found the glass-holders asked for.” On the whole, I am told, this forestalling was not very profitable to the speculators, as when fresh supplies were received at the “swags,” the price fell.
At first this street business was carried on by men, but it was soon resorted to by numbers of poor women and children. One gentleman informed me that in consequence of reading “London Labour and the London Poor,” he usually had a little talk with the street-sellers of whom he purchased any trifle; he bought these pen-holders of ten or twelve different women and girls; all of them could answer correctly his inquiry as to the uses of the pens; but only one girl, of fifteen or sixteen, and she hesitatingly, ventured to assert that she could write her own name with the pen she offered for sale. The street-trade still continues, but instead of being in the hands of 400 individuals—as it was, at the very least, I am assured, at one period—there are now only about fifty carrying it on itinerantly, while with the “pitched” sales-people, the glass-holders are merely a portion of the stock, and with the itinerants ten dozen a week (a receipt of 10s., and a profit of 4s. 9d.) is now an average sale. The former glass-holder sellers of the poorer sort are now vending oranges.
Shirt Buttons form another of the articles—(generally either “useful things” or with such recommendation to street-buyers as the galvanic amulets possessed)—which every now and then are disposed of in great quantities in the streets. If an attempt be made by a manufacturer to establish a cheaper shirt button, for instance, of horn, or pot, or glass, and if it prove unsuccessful, or if an improvement be effected and the old stock becomes a sort of dead stock, the superseded goods have to be disposed of, and I am informed by a person familiar with those establishments, that the swag-shopkeepers can always find customers, “for anything likely,” with the indispensable proviso that it be cheap. In this way shirt buttons have lately been sold in the streets, not only by the vendors of small wares in their regular trade, but by men, lads, and girls, some of the males shirtless themselves, who sell them solely, with a continuous and monotonous cry of “Halfpenny a dozen; halfpenny a dozen.” The wholesale price of the last “street lot,” was 3d. the gross, or ¼d. the dozen. To clear 6d. a day in shirt buttons is “good work;” it is more frequently 4d.
The walking-sticks sold in the streets of London are principally purchased at wholesale houses in Mint-street and Union-street, Borough, and their neighbourhoods. “There’s no street-trade,” said an intelligent man, “and I’ve tried most that’s been, or promised to be, a living in the streets, that is so tiresome as the walking-stick trade. There is nothing in which people are so particular. The stick’s sure to be either too short or too long, or too thick or too thin, or too limp or too stiff. You would think it was a simple thing for a man to choose a stick out of a lot, but if you were with me a selling on a fine Sunday at Battersea Fields, you’d see it wasn’t. O, it’s a tiresome job.”
The trade is a summer and a Sunday trade. The best localities are the several parks, and the approaches to them, Greenwich-park included; Hampstead Heath, Kennington Common, and, indeed, wherever persons congregate for pedestrian purposes, Battersea Fields being, perhaps, the place where the greatest Sunday trade is carried on. Some of the greater thoroughfares too, such as Oxford-street and the City-road, are a good deal frequented by the stick-sellers.
This trade—like others where the article sold is not of general consumption or primary usefulness—affords, what I once heard a street-seller call, “a good range.” There is no generally recognised price or value, so that a smart trader in sticks can apportion his offers, or his charges, to what he may think to be the extent of endurance in a customer. What might be 2d. to a man who “looked knowing,” might be 6d. to a man who “looked green.” The common sticks, which are the “cripples,” I was told, of all the sorts of sticks (the spoiled or inferior sticks) mixed with “common pines,” are 15d. the dozen. From this price there is a gradual scale up to 8s. the dozen for “good polished;” beyond that price the street-seller rarely ventures, and seldom buys even at that (for street-trade) high rate, as fourpenny and sixpenny sticks go off the best; these saleable sticks are generally polished hazel or pine. “I’ve sold to all sorts of people, sir,” said a stick-seller. “I once had some very pretty sticks, very cheap, only 2d. a piece, and I sold a good many to boys. They bought them, I suppose, to look like men, and daren’t carry them home; for I once saw a boy I’d sold a stick to, break it and throw it away just before he knocked at the door of a respectable house one Sunday evening. I’ve sold shilling sticks to gentlemen, sometimes, that had lost or broken or forgot their own. Canes there’s nothing done in now in the streets; nor in ‘vines,’ which is the little switchy things that used to be a sort of a plaything. There’s only one stick-man in the streets, as far as I know, I think—that has what you may call a capital in sticks. Only the other day I saw him sell a registered stick near Charing-cross. It was a beauty. A Bath cane, with a splendid ivory head, and a compass let into the ivory. The head screwed off, and beneath was a map of London and a Guide to the Great Exhibition. O, but he has a beautiful stock, and aint he aristocratic! ‘Ash twigs,’ with the light-coloured bark on them, not polished, but just trimmed, was a very good sale, but they’re not now. Why, as to what I take, it’s such a uncertain trade that it’s hard to say. Some days I haven’t taken 6d., and the most money I ever took was one Derby day at Epsom—I wish there was more Derby days, for poor people’s sakes—and then I took 30s. The most money as ever I took in London was 14s.—one Sunday, in Battersea Fields, when I had a prime cheap stock of bamboos. When I keep entirely to the stick trade, and during the summer, I may take 35s. in a week, with a profit of 15s.”
The street stick-sellers are, I am assured, sometimes about 200 in number, on a fine Sunday in the summer. Of these, some are dock-labourers, who thus add to their daily earnings by a seventh day’s labour; others, and a smarter class, are the “supers” (supernumeraries) of theatres, who also eke out their pittance by Sunday toil; porters, irregularly employed, and consequently “hard pushed to live,” also sell walking-sticks on the Sundays; as do others who “cannot afford”—as a well-educated man, a patterer on paper, once said to me—“to lose a day if they were d——d for it.” The usual mode of this street-trade is to carry the bundle of sticks strapped together, under the arm, and deposit the ends on the ground when a sale is to be effected. A few, however, and principally Jews, have “stands,” with the walking-sticks inclosed in a sort of frame. On the Mondays there are not above a third of the number of stick-sellers there are on the Sundays; and on the other days of the week not above a seventh, or an eighth. Calculating that for 12 weeks of the year there are every day 35 stick-sellers, each taking, on an average, 30s. a week (with a profit, individually, of about 12s.), we find 630l. expended in walking-sticks in the streets.
On clear winter days a stick-seller occasionally plies his trade, but on frosty days they are occupied in letting out skates in the parks, or wherever ponds are frozen.
These traders are a distinct class from the stick-sellers, and have a distinct class of customers. The sale is considerable; for to many the possession of a whip is a matter of importance. If one be lost or stolen, for instance, from a butcher’s cart at Newgate-market, the need of a whip to proceed with the cart and horse to its destination, prompts the purchase in the quickest manner, and this is usually effected of the street-seller who offers his wares to the carters at every established resort.
The commonest of the whips sold to cart-drivers is sometimes represented as whalebone covered with gut; but the whalebone is a stick, and the flexible part is a piece of leather, while the gut is a sort of canvas, made to resemble the worked gut of the better sort of whips, and is pasted to the stock; the thong—which in the common sort is called “four strands,” or plaits—being attached to the flexible part. Some of these whips are old stocks recovered, and many are sad rubbish; but for any deceit the street-seller can hardly be considered responsible, as he always purchases at the shop of a wholesale whipmaker, who is in some cases a retailer at the same price and under the same representations as the street-seller. The retail price is 1s. each; the wholesale, 8s. and 9s. a dozen. Some of the street whip-sellers represent themselves as the makers, but the whips are almost all made in Birmingham and Walsall.