“I gets the eggs mostly from Witham and Chelmsford, in Essex; Chelmsford is 20 mile from Whitechapel Church, and Witham, 8 mile further. I know more about them parts than anywhere else, being used to go after moss for Mr. Butler, of the herb-shop in Covent Garden. Sometimes I go to Shirley Common and Shirley Wood, that’s three miles from Croydon, and Croydon is ten from Westminster-bridge. When I’m out bird-nesting I take all the cross country roads across fields and into the woods. I begin bird-nesting in May and leave off about August, and then comes the bulrushing, and they last till Christmas; and after that comes the roots and wild flowers, which serves me up to May again. I go out bird-nesting three times a week. I go away at night, and come up on the morning of the day after. I’m away a day and two nights. I start between one and two in the morning and walk all night—for the coolness—you see the weather’s so hot you can’t do it in the daytime. When I get down I go to sleep for a couple of hours. I ‘skipper it’—turn in under a hedge or anywhere. I get down about nine in the morning, at Chelmsford, and about one if I go to Witham. After I’ve had my sleep I start off to get my nests and things. I climb the trees, often I go up a dozen in the day, and many a time there’s nothing in the nest when I get up. I only fell once; I got on the end of the bough and slipped off. I p’isoned my foot once with the stagnant water going after the bulrushes,—there was horseleeches, and effets, and all kinds of things in the water, and they stung me, I think. I couldn’t use my foot hardly for six weeks afterwards, and was obliged to have a stick to walk with. I couldn’t get about at all for four days, and should have starved if it hadn’t been that a young man kept me. He was a printer by trade, and almost a stranger to me, only he seed me and took pity on me. When I fell off the bough I wasn’t much hurt, nothing to speak of. The house-sparrow is the worst nest of all to take; it’s no value either when it is got, and is the most difficult of all to get at. You has to get up a sparapet (a parapet) of a house, and either to get permission, or run the risk of going after it without. Partridges’ eggs (they has no nest) they gives you six months for, if they see you selling them, because it’s game, and I haven’t no licence; but while you’re hawking, that is showing ’em, they can’t touch you. The owl is a very difficult nest to get, they builds so high in the trees. The bottle-tit is a hard nest to find; you may go all the year round, and, perhaps, only get one. The nest I like best to get is the chaffinch, because they’re in the hedge, and is no bother. Oh, you hasn’t got the skylark down, sir; they builds on the ground, and has five eggs; I sell them for 4d. The robin-redbreast has five eggs, too, and is 3d. The ringdove has two eggs, and is 6d. The tit-lark—that’s five blue eggs, and very rare—I get 4d. for them. The jay has five eggs, and a flat nest, very wiry, indeed; it’s a ground bird; that’s 1s.—the egg is just like a partridge egg. When I first took a kingfisher’s nest, I didn’t know the name of it, and I kept wondering what it was. I daresay I asked three dozen people, and none of them could tell me. At last a bird-fancier, the lame man at the Mile-end gate, told me what it was. I likes to get the nesties to sell, but I havn’t no fancy for birds. Sometimes I get squirrels’ nesties with the young in ’em—about four of ’em there mostly is, and they’re the only young things I take—the young birds I leaves; they’re no good to me. The four squirrels brings me from 6s. to 8s. After I takes a bird’s nest, the old bird comes dancing over it, chirupping, and crying, and flying all about. When they lose their nest they wander about, and don’t know where to go. Oftentimes I wouldn’t take them if it wasn’t for the want of the victuals, it seems such a pity to disturb ’em after they’ve made their little bits of places. Bats I never take myself—I can’t get over ’em. If I has an order for ’em, I buys ’em of boys.
“I mostly start off into the country on Monday and come up on Wednesday. The most nesties as ever I took is twenty-two, and I generally get about twelve or thirteen. These, if I’ve an order, I sell directly, or else I may be two days, and sometimes longer, hawking them in the street. Directly I’ve sold them I go off again that night, if it’s fine; though I often go in the wet, and then I borrow a tarpaulin of a man in the street where I live. If I’ve a quick sale I get down and back three times in a week, but then I don’t go so far as Witham, sometimes only to Rumford; that is 12 miles from Whitechapel Church. I never got an order from a bird-fancier; they gets all the eggs they want of the countrymen who comes up to market.
“It’s gentlemen I gets my orders of, and then mostly they tells me to bring ’em one nest of every kind I can get hold of, and that will often last me three months in the summer. There’s one gentleman as I sells to is a wholesale dealer in window-glass—and he has a hobby for them. He puts ’em into glass cases, and makes presents of ’em to his friends. He has been one of my best customers. I’ve sold him a hundred nesties, I’m sure. There’s a doctor at Dalston I sell a great number to—he’s taking one of every kind of me now. The most of my customers is stray ones in the streets. They’re generally boys. I sells a nest now and then to a lady with a child; but the boys of twelve to fifteen years of age is my best friends. They buy ’em only for cur’osity. I sold three partridges’ eggs yesterday to a gentleman, and he said he would put them under a bantam he’d got, and hatch ’em.
“The snakes, and adders, and slow-worms I get from where there’s moss or a deal of grass. Sunny weather’s the best for them, they won’t come out when it’s cold; then I go to a dung-heap, and turn it over. Sometimes, I find five or six there, but never so large as the one I had to-day, that’s a yard and five inches long, and three-quarters of a pound weight. Snakes is 5s. a pound. I sell all I can get to Mr. Butler, of Covent-garden. He keeps ’em alive, for they’re no good dead. I think it’s for the skin they’re kept. Some buys ’em to dissect: a gentleman in Theobalds-road does so, and so he does hedgehogs. Some buys ’em for stuffing, and others for cur’osities. Adders is the same price as snakes, 5s. a pound after they first comes in, when they’re 10s. Adders is wanted dead; it’s only the fat and skin that’s of any value; the fat is used for curing p’isoned wounds, and the skin is used for any one as has cut their heads. Farmers buys the fat, and rubs it into the wound when they gets bitten or stung by anything p’isonous. I kill the adders with a stick, or, when I has shoes, I jumps on ’em. Some fine days I get four or five snakes at a time; but then they’re mostly small, and won’t weigh above half a pound. I don’t get many adders—they don’t weigh many ounces, adders don’t—and I mostly has 9d. a-piece for each I gets. I sells them to Mr. Butler as well.
“The hedgehogs is 1s. each; I gets them mostly in Essex. I’ve took one hedgehog with three young ones, and sold the lot for 2s. 6d. People in the streets bought them of me—they’re wanted to kill the black-beetles; they’re fed on bread and milk, and they’ll suck a cow quite dry in their wild state. They eat adders, and can’t be p’isoned, at least it says so in a book I’ve got about ’em at home.
“The effets I gets orders for in the streets. Gentlemen gives me their cards, and tells me to bring them one; they’re 2d. apiece. I get them at Hampstead and Highgate, from the ponds. They’re wanted for cur’osity.
“The snails and frogs I sell to Frenchmen. I don’t know what part they eat of the frog, but I know they buy them, and the dandelion root. The frogs is 6d. and 1s. a dozen. They like the yellow-bellied ones, the others they’re afraid is toads. They always pick out the yellow-bellied first; I don’t know how to feed ’em, or else I might fatten them. Many people swallows young frogs, they’re reckoned very good things to clear the inside. The frogs I catch in ponds and ditches up at Hampstead and Highgate, but I only get them when I’ve a order. I’ve had a order for as many as six dozen, but that was for the French hotel in Leicester-square; but I have sold three dozen a week to one man, a Frenchman, as keeps a cigar shop in R—r’s-court.
“The snails I sell by the pailful—at 2s. 6d. the pail. There is some hundreds in a pail. The wet weather is the best times for catching ’em; the French people eats ’em. They boils ’em first to get ’em out of the shell and get rid of the green froth; then they boils them again, and after that in vinegar. They eats ’em hot, but some of the foreigners likes ’em cold. They say they’re better, if possible, than whelks. I used to sell a great many to a lady and gentleman in Soho-square, and to many of the French I sell 1s.’s worth, that’s about three or four quarts. Some persons buys snails for birds, and some to strengthen a sickly child’s back; they rub the back all over with the snails, and a very good thing they tell me it is. I used to take 2s.’s worth a week to one woman; it’s the green froth that does the greatest good. There are two more birds’-nest sellers besides myself, they don’t do as many as me the two of ’em. They’re very naked, their things is all to ribbins; they only go into the country once in a fortnight. They was never nothing, no trade—they never was in place—from what I’ve heard—either of them. I reckon I sell about 20 nesties a week take one week with another, and that I do for four months in the year. (This altogether makes 320 nests.) Yes, I should say, I do sell about 300 birds’-nests every year, and the other two, I’m sure, don’t sell half that. Indeed they don’t want to sell; they does better by what they gets give to them. I can’t say what they takes, they’re Irish, and I never was in conversation with them. I get about 4s. to 5s. for the 20 nests, that’s between 2d. and 3d. apiece. I sell about a couple of snakes every week, and for some of them I get 1s., and for the big ones 2s. 6d.; but them I seldom find. I’ve only had three hedgehogs this season, and I’ve done a little in snails and frogs, perhaps about 1s. The many foreigners in London this season hasn’t done me no good. I haven’t been to Leicester-square lately, or perhaps I might have got a large order or two for frogs.”
“I am 22 years of age. My father was a dyer, and I was brought up to the same trade. My father lived at Arundel, in Sussex, and kept a shop there. He had a good business as dyer, scourer, calico glazer, and furniture cleaner. I have heard mother say his business in Arundel brought him in 300l. a year at least. He had eight men in his employ, and none under 30s. a week. I had two brothers and one sister, but one of my brothers is since dead. Mother died five years ago in the Consumption Hospital, at Chelsea, just after it was built. I was very young indeed when father died; I can hardly remember him. He died in Middlesex Hospital: he had abscesses all over him; there were six-and-thirty at the time of his death. I’ve heard mother say many times that she thinked it was through exerting himself too much at his business that he fell ill. The ruin of father was owing to his house being burnt down; the fire broke out at two in the morning; he wasn’t insured: I don’t remember the fire; I’ve only heerd mother talk about it. It was the ruin of us all she used to tell me; father had so much work belonging to other people; a deal of moreen curtains, five or six hundred yards. It was of no use his trying to start again: he lost all his glazing machines and tubs, and his drugs and ‘punches.’ From what I’ve heerd from mother they was worth some hundreds. The Duke of Norfolk, after the fire, gave a good lot of money to the poor people whose things father had to clean, and father himself came up to London. I wasn’t two year old when that happened. We all come up with father, and he opened a shop in London and bought all new things. He had got a bit of money left, and mother’s uncle lent him 60l. We lived two doors from the stage door of the Queen’s Theatre, in Pitt-street, Charlotte-street, Fitzroy-square; but father didn’t do much in London; he had a new connection to make, and when he died his things was sold for the rent of the house. There was only money enough to bury him. I don’t know how long ago that was, but I think it was about three years after our coming to London, for I’ve heerd mother say I was six years old when father died. After father’s death mother borrowed some more money of her uncle, who was well to do. He was perfumer to her Majesty: he’s dead now, and left the business to his foreman. The business was worth 2000l. His wife, my mother’s aunt, is alive still, and though she’s a woman of large property, she won’t so much as look at me. She keeps her carriage and two footmen; her address is, Mrs. Lewis, No. 10, Porchester-terrace, Bayswater. I have been in her drawing-room two or three times. I used to take letters to her from mother: she was very kind to me then, and give me several half-crowns. She knows the state I am in now. A young man wrote a letter to her, saying I had no clothes to look after work in, and that I was near starving, but she sent no answer to it. The last time I called at her house she sent me down nothing, and bid the servant tell me not to come any more. Ever since I’ve wanted it I’ve never had nothing from her, but before that she used to give me something whenever I took a letter from mother to her. The last half-crown I got at her house was from the cook, who gave it me out of her own money because she’d known my mother.
“I’ve got a grandmother living in Woburn-place; she’s in service there, and been in the family for twenty years. The gentleman died lately and left her half his property. He was a foreigner and had no relations here. My grandmother used to be very good to me, and when I first got out of work she always gave me something when I called, and had me down in her room. She was housekeeper then. She never offered to get me a situation, but only gave me a meal of victuals and a shilling or eighteen-pence whenever I called. I was tidy in my dress then. At last a new footman came, and he told me as I wasn’t to call again; he said, the family didn’t allow no followers. I’ve never seen my grandmother since that time but once, and then I was passing with my basket of birds’ nests in my hand just as she was coming out of the door. I was dressed about the same then as you seed me yesterday. I was without a shirt to my back. I don’t think she saw me, and I was ashamed to let her see me as I was. She was kind enough to me, that is, she wouldn’t mind about giving me a shilling or so at a time, but she never would do nothing else for me, and yet she had got plenty of money in the bank, and a gold watch, and all, at her side.
“After father died, as I was saying, mother got some money from her uncle and set up on her own account; she took in glazing for the trade. Father had a few shops that he worked for, and they employed mother after his death. She kept on at this for eighteen months and then she got married again. Before this an uncle of mine, my father’s brother, who kept some lime-kilns down in Bury St. Edmunds, consented to take my brother and sister and provide for them, and four or five year ago he got them both into the Duke of Norfolk’s service, and there they are now. They’ve never seen me since I was a child but once, and that was a few year ago. I’ve never sent to them to say how badly I was off. They’re younger than I am, and can only just take care of theirselves. When mother married again, her husband came to live at the house; he was a dyer. He behaved very well to me. Mother wouldn’t send me down to uncle’s, she was too fond of me. I was sent to school for about eighteen months, and after that I used to assist in the glazing at home, and so I went on very comfortable for some time. Nine year ago I went to work at a French dyer’s, in Rathbone-place. My step-father got me there, and there I stopped six year. I lived in the house after the first eighteen months of my service. Five year ago mother fell ill; she had been ailing many years, and she got admitted into the Consumption Hospital, at Brompton. She was there just upon three months and was coming out the next day (her term was up), when she died on the over night. After that my step-father altered very much towards me. He didn’t want me at home at all. He told me so a fortnight after mother was in her grave. He took to drinking very hearty directly she was gone. He would do anything for me before that. He used to take me with him to every place of amusement what he went to, but when he took to drinking he quite changed; then he got to beat me, and at last he told me I needn’t come there any more.
“After that, I still kept working in Rathbone-place, and got a lodging of my own; I used to have 9s. a week where I was, and I paid 2s. a week for my bed, and washing, and mending. I had half a room with a man and his wife; I went on so for about two years, and then I was took bad with the scarlet fever and went to Gray’s-inn-lane hospital. After I was cured of the scarlet fever, I had the brain fever, and was near my death; I was altogether eight weeks in the hospital, and when I come out I could get no work where I had been before. The master’s nephew had come from Paris, and they had all French hands in the house. He wouldn’t employ an English hand at all. He give me a trifle of money, and told me he would pay my lodgings for a week or two while I looked for work. I sought all about and couldn’t find any; this was about three year ago. People wouldn’t have me because I didn’t know nothing about the English mode of business. I couldn’t even tell the names of the English drugs, having been brought up in a French house. At last, my master got tired of paying for my lodging, and I used to try and pick up a few pence in the streets by carrying boxes and holding horses, it was all as I could get to do; I tried all I could to find employment, and they was the only jobs I could get. But I couldn’t make enough for my lodging this way, and over and over again I’ve had to sleep out. Then I used to walk the streets most of the night, or lie about in the markets till morning came in the hopes of getting a job. I’m a very little eater, and perhaps that’s the luckiest thing for such as me; half a pound of bread and a few potatoes will do me for the day. If I could afford it, I used to get a ha’porth of coffee and a ha’porth of sugar, and make it do twice. Sometimes I used to have victuals give to me, sometimes I went without altogether; and sometimes I couldn’t eat. I can’t always.
“Six weeks after I had been knocking about in the streets in the manner I’ve told you, a man I met in Covent-Garden market told me he was going into the country to get some roots (it was in the winter time and cold indeed; I was dressed about the same as I am now, only I had a pair of boots); and he said if I chose to go with him, he’d give me half of whatever he earned. I went to Croydon and got some primroses; my share came to 9d., and that was quite a God-send to me, after getting nothing. Sometimes before that I’d been two days without tasting anything; and when I got some victuals after that, I couldn’t touch them. All I felt was giddy; I wasn’t to say hungry, only weak and sicklified. I went with this man after the roots two or three times; he took me to oblige me, and show me the way how to get a bit of food for myself; after that, when I got to know all about it, I went to get roots on my own account. I never felt a wish to take nothing when I was very hard up. Sometimes when I got cold and was tired, walking about and weak from not having had nothing to eat, I used to think I’d break a window and take something out to get locked up; but I could never make my mind up to it; they never hurt me, I’d say to myself. I do fancy though, if anybody had refused me a bit of bread, I should have done something again them, but I couldn’t, do you see, in cold blood like.
“When the summer came round a gentleman whom I seed in the market asked me if I’d get him half a dozen nesties—he didn’t mind what they was, so long as they was small, and of different kinds—and as I’d come across a many in my trips after the flowers, I told him I would do so—and that first put it into my head; and I’ve been doing that every summer since then. It’s poor work, though, at the best. Often and often I have to walk 30 miles out without any victuals to take with me, or money to get any, and 30 miles again back, and bring with me about a dozen nesties; and, perhaps, if I’d no order for them, and was forced to sell them to the boys, I shouldn’t get more than a shilling for the lot after all. When the time comes round for it, I go Christmasing and getting holly, but that’s more dangerous work than bird-nesting; the farmers don’t mind your taking the nesties, as it prevents the young birds from growing up and eating their corn. The greater part of the holly used in London for trimming up the churches and sticking in the puddings, is stolen by such as me, at the risk of getting six months for it. The farmers brings a good lot to market, but we is obligated to steal it. Take one week with another, I’m sure I don’t make above 5s. You can tell that to look at me. I don’t drink, and I don’t gamble; so you can judge how much I get when I’ve had to pawn my shirt for a meal. All last week I only sold two nesties—they was a partridge’s and a yellow-hammer’s; for one I got 6d., and the other 3d., and I had been thirteen miles to get them. I got beside that a fourpenny piece for some chickweed which I’d been up to Highgate to gather for a man with a bad leg (it’s the best thing there is for a poultice to a wound), and then I earned another 4d. by some mash (marsh) mallow leaves (that there was to purify the blood of a poor woman): that, with 4d. that a gentleman give to me, was all I got last week; 1s. 9d. I think it is altogether. I had some victuals give to me in the street, or else I daresay I should have had to go without; but, as it was, I gave the money to the man and his wife I live with. You see they had nothing, and as they’re good to me when I want, why, I did what I could for them. I’ve tried to get out of my present life, but there seems to be an ill luck again me. Sometimes I gets a good turn. A gentleman gives me an order, and then I saves a shilling or eighteenpence, so as to buy something with that I can sell again in the streets; but a wet day is sure to come, and then I’m cracked up, obligated to eat it all away. Once I got to sell fish. A gentleman give me a crown-piece in the street, and I borrowed a barrow at 2d. a day, and did pretty well for a time. In three weeks I had saved 18s.; then I got an order for a sack of moss from one of the flower-sellers, and I went down to Chelmsford, and stopped for the night in Lower Nelson-street, at the sign of “The Three Queens.” I had my money safe in my fob the night before, and a good pair of boots to my feet then; when I woke in the morning my boots was gone, and on feeling in my fob my money was gone too. There was four beds in the rooms, feather and flock; the feather ones was 4d., and the flock 3d. for a single one, and 2½d. each person for a double one. There was six people in the room that night, and one of ’em was gone before I awoke—he was a cadger—and had took my money with him. I complained to the landlord—they call him George—but it was no good; all I could get was some victuals. So I’ve been obliged to keep to birds’-nesting ever since.
“I’ve never been in prison but once. I was took up for begging. I was merely leaning again the railings of Tavistock-square with my birds’-nesties in my hand, and the policemen took me off to Clerkenwell, but the magistrates, instead of sending me to prison, gave me 2s. out of the poors’-box. I feel it very much going about without shoes or without shirt, and exposed to all weathers, and often out all night. The doctor at the hospital in Gray’s-inn-lane gave me two flannels, and told me that whatever I did I was to keep myself wrapped up; but what’s the use of saying that to such as me who is obligated to pawn the shirt off our back for food the first wet day as comes? If you haven’t got money to pay for your bed at a lodging-house, you must take the shirt off your back and leave it with them, or else they’ll turn you out. I know many such. Sometimes I go to an artist. I had 5s. when I was drawed before the Queen. I wasn’t ’xactly drawed before her, but my portrait was shown to her, and I was told that if I’d be there I might receive a trifle. I was drawed as a gipsy fiddler. Mr. Oakley in Regent-street was the gentleman as did it. I was dressed in some things he got for me. I had an Italian’s hat, one with a broad brim and a peaked crown, a red plush waistcoat, and a yellow hankercher tied in a good many knots round my neck. I’d a black velveteen Newmarket-cut coat, with very large pearl buttons, and a pair of black knee-breeches tied with fine red strings. Then I’d blue stripe stockings and high-ancle boots with very thin soles. I’d a fiddle in one hand and a bow in the other. The gentleman said he drawed me for my head of hair. I’ve never been a gipsy, but he told me he didn’t mind that, for I should make as good a gipsy fiddler as the real thing. The artists mostly give me 2s. I’ve only been three times. I only wish I could get away from my present life. Indeed I would do any work if I could get it. I’m sure I could have a good character from my masters in Rathbone-place, for I never done nothing wrong. But if I couldn’t get work I might very well, if I’d money enough, get a few flowers to sell. As it is it’s more than any one can do to save at bird-nesting, and I’m sure I’m as prudent as e’er a one in the streets. I never took the pledge, but still I never take no beer nor spirits—I never did. Mother told me never to touch ’em, and I haven’t tasted a drop. I’ve often been in a public-house selling my things, and people has offered me something to drink, but I never touch any. I can’t tell why I dislike doing so—but something seems to tell me not to taste such stuff. I don’t know whether it’s what my mother said to me. I know I was very fond of her, but I don’t say it’s that altogether as makes me do it. I don’t feel to want it. I smoke a good bit, and would sooner have a bit of baccy than a meal at any time. I could get a goodish rig-out in the lane for a few shillings. A pair of boots would cost me 2s., and a coat I could get for 2s. 6d. I go to a ragged school three times a week if I can, for I’m but a poor scholar still, and I should like to know how to read; it’s always handy you know, sir.”
This lad has been supplied with a suit of clothes and sufficient money to start him in some of the better kind of street-trades. It was thought advisable not to put him to any more settled occupation on account of the vagrant habits he has necessarily acquired during his bird-nesting career. Before doing this he was employed as errand-boy for a week, with the object of testing his trustworthiness, and was found both honest and attentive. He appears a prudent lad, but of course it is difficult, as yet, to speak positively as to his character. He has, however, been assured that if he shows a disposition to follow some more reputable calling he shall at least be put in the way of so doing.
The street squirrel-sellers are generally the same men as are engaged in the open-air traffic in cage-birds. There are, however, about six men who devote themselves more particularly to squirrel-selling, while as many more sometimes “take a turn at it.” The squirrel is usually carried in the vendor’s arms, or is held against the front of his coat, so that the animal’s long bushy tail is seen to advantage. There is usually a red leather collar round its neck, to which is attached some slender string, but so contrived that the squirrel shall not appear to be a prisoner, nor in general—although perhaps the hawker became possessed of his squirrel only that morning—does the animal show any symptoms of fear.
The chief places in which squirrels are offered for sale, are Regent-street and the Royal Exchange, but they are offered also in all the principal thoroughfares—especially at the West End. The purchasers are gentlefolk, tradespeople, and a few of the working classes who are fond of animals. The wealthier persons usually buy the squirrels for their children, and, even after the free life of the woods, the animal seems happy enough in the revolving cage, in which it “thinks it climbs.”
The prices charged are from 2s. to 5s., “or more if it can be got,” from a third to a half being profit. The sellers will oft enough state, if questioned, that they caught the squirrels in Epping Forest, or Caen Wood, or any place sufficiently near London, but such is hardly ever the case, for the squirrels are bought by them of the dealers in live animals. Countrymen will sometimes catch a few squirrels and bring them to London, and nine times out of ten they sell them to the shopkeepers. To sell three squirrels a day in the street is accounted good work.
I am assured by the best-informed parties that for five months of the year there are 20 men selling squirrels in the streets, at from 20 to 50 per cent. profit, and that they average a weekly sale of six each. The average price is from 2s. to 2s. 6d., although not very long ago one man sold a “wonderfully fine squirrel” in the street for three half-crowns, but they are sometimes parted with for 1s. 6d. or less, rather than be kept over-night. Thus 2400 squirrels are vended yearly in the streets, at a cost to the public of 240l.
There are a few leverets, or young hares, sold in the streets, and they are vended for the most part in the suburbs, where the houses are somewhat detached, and where there are plenty of gardens. The softness and gentleness of the leveret’s look pleases children, more especially girls, I am informed, and it is usually through their importunity that the young hares are bought, in order that they may be fed from the garden, and run tame about an out-house. The leverets thus sold, however, as regards nine out of ten, soon die. They are rarely supplied with their natural food, and all their natural habits are interrupted. They are in constant fear and danger, moreover, from both dogs and cats. One shopkeeper who sold fancy rabbits in a street off the Westminster-road told me that he had once tried to tame and rear leverets in hutches, as he did rabbits, but to no purpose. He had no doubt it might be done, he said, but not in a shop or a small house. Three or four leverets are hawked by the street-people in one basket and are seen lying on hay, the basket having either a wide-worked lid, or a net thrown over it. The hawkers of live poultry sell the most leverets, but they are vended also by the singing-bird sellers. The animals are nearly all bought, for this traffic, at Leadenhall, and are retailed at 1s. to 2s. each, one-third to one-half being profit. Perhaps 300 are sold this way yearly, producing 22l. 10s.
About 400 young wild rabbits are sold in the street in a similar way, but at lower sums, from 3d. to 6d. each, 4d. being the most frequent rate. The yearly outlay is thus 6l. 13s. They thrive, in confinement, no better than the leverets.
Of these dealers, residents in London, there are about 70; but during my inquiry (at the beginning of July) there were not 20 in town. One of their body knew of ten who were at work live-fish selling, and there might be as many more, he thought, “working” the remoter suburbs of Blackheath, Croydon, Richmond, Twickenham, Isleworth, or wherever there are villa residences of the wealthy. This is the season when the gold and silver fish-sellers, who are altogether a distinct class from the bird-sellers of the streets, resort to the country, to vend their glass globes, with the glittering fish swimming ceaselessly round and round. The gold fish-hawkers are, for the most part, of the very best class of the street-sellers. One of the principal fish-sellers is in winter a street-vendor of cough drops, hore-hound candy, coltsfoot-sticks, and other medicinal confectionaries, which he himself manufactures. Another leading gold-fish seller is a costermonger now “on pine-apples.” A third, “with a good connection among the innkeepers,” is in the autumn and winter a hawker of game and poultry.
There are in London three wholesale dealers in gold and silver fish; two of whom—one in the Kingsland-road and the other close by Billingsgate—supply more especially the street-sellers, and the street-traffic is considerable. Gold fish is one of the things which people buy when brought to their doors, but which they seldom care to “order.” The importunity of children when a man unexpectedly tempts them with a display of such brilliant creatures as gold fish, is another great promotive of the street-trade; and the street-traders are the best customers of the wholesale purveyors, buying somewhere about three-fourths of their whole stock. The dealers keep their fish in tanks suited to the purpose, but goldfish are never bred in London. The English-reared gold fish are “raised” for the most part, as respects the London market, in several places in Essex. In some parts they are bred in warm ponds, the water being heated by the steam from adjacent machinery, and in some places they are found to thrive well. Some are imported from France, Holland, and Belgium; some are brought from the Indies, and are usually sold to the dealers to improve their breed, which every now and then, I was told, “required a foreign mixture, or they didn’t keep up their colour.” The Indian and foreign fish, however, are also sold in the streets; the dealers, or rather the Essex breeders, who are often in London, have “just the pick of them,” usually through the agency of their town customers. The English-reared gold fish are not much short of three-fourths of the whole supply, as the importation of these fishes is troublesome; and unless they are sent under the care of a competent person, or unless the master or steward of a vessel is made to incur a share in the venture, by being paid so much freight-money for as many gold and silver fishes as are landed in good health, and nothing for the dead or dying, it is very hazardous sending them on shipboard at all, as in case of neglect they may all die during the voyage.
The gold and silver fish are of the carp species, and are natives of China, but they were first introduced into this country from Portugal about 1690. Some are still brought from Portugal. They have been common in England for about 120 years.
These fish are known in the street-trade as “globe” and “pond” fish. The distinction is not one of species, nor even of the “variety” of a species, but merely a distinction of size. The larger fish are “pond;” the smaller, “globe.” But the difference on which the street-sellers principally dwell is that the pond fish are far more troublesome to keep by them in a “slack time,” as they must be fed and tended most sedulously. Their food is stale bread or biscuit. The “globe” fish are not fed at all by the street-dealer, as the animalcules and the minute insects in the water suffice for their food. Soft, rain, or sometimes Thames water, is used for the filling of the globe containing a street-seller’s gold fish, the water being changed twice a day, at a public-house or elsewhere, when the hawker is on a round. Spring-water is usually rejected, as the soft water contains “more feed.” One man, however, told me he had recourse to the street-pumps for a renewal of water, twice, or occasionally thrice a day, when the weather was sultry; but spring or well water “wouldn’t do at all.” He was quite unconscious that he was using it from the pump.
The wholesale price of these fish ranges from 5s. to 18s. per dozen, with a higher charge for “picked fish,” when high prices must be paid. The cost of “large silvers,” for instance, which are scarcer than “large golds,” so I heard them called, is sometimes 5s. apiece, even to a retailer, and rarely less than 3s. 6d. The most frequent price, retail from the hawker—for almost all the fish are hawked, but only there, I presume, for a temporary purpose—is 2s. the pair. The gold fish are now always hawked in glass globes, containing about a dozen occupants, within a diameter of twelve inches. These globes are sold by the hawker, or, if ordered, supplied by him on his next round that way, the price being about 2s. Glass globes, for the display of gold fish, are indeed manufactured at from 6d. to 1l. 10s. each, but 2s. or 2s. 6d. is the usual limit to the price of those vended in the street. The fish are lifted out of the water in the globe to consign to a purchaser, by being caught in a neat net, of fine and different-coloured cordage, always carried by the hawker, and manufactured for the trade at 2s. the dozen. Neat handles for these nets, of stained or plain wood, are 1s. the dozen. The dealers avoid touching the fish with their hands. Both gold fish and glass globes are much cheaper than they were ten years ago; the globes are cheaper, of course, since the alteration in the tax on glass, and the street-sellers are, numerically, nearly double what they were.
From a well-looking and well-spoken youth of 21 or 22, I had the following account. He was the son, and grandson, of costermongers, but was—perhaps, in consequence of his gold-fish selling lying among a class not usually the costermongers’ customers—of more refined manners than the generality of the costers’ children.
“I’ve been in the streets, sir,” he said, “helping my father, until I was old enough to sell on my own account, since I was six years old. Yes, I like a street life, I’ll tell you the plain truth, for I was put by my father to a paperstainer, and found I couldn’t bear to stay in doors. It would have killed me. Gold fish are as good a thing to sell as anything else, perhaps, but I’ve been a costermonger as well, and have sold both fruit and good fish—salmon and fine soles. Gold fish are not good for eating. I tried one once, just out of curiosity, and it tasted very bitter indeed; I tasted it boiled. I’ve worked both town and country on gold fish. I’ve served both Brighton and Hastings. The fish were sent to me by rail, in vessels with air-holes, when I wanted more. I never stopped at lodging-houses, but at respectable public-houses, where I could be well suited in the care of my fish. It’s an expense, but there’s no help for it.” [A costermonger, when I questioned him on the subject, told me that he had sometimes sold gold fish in the country, and though he had often enough slept in common lodging-houses, he never could carry his fish there, for he felt satisfied, although he had never tested the fact, that in nine out of ten such places, the fish, in the summer season, would half of them die during the night from the foul air.] “Gold fish sell better in the country than town,” the street-dealer continued; “much better. They’re more thought of in the country. My father’s sold them all over the world, as the saying is. I’ve sold both foreign and English fish. I prefer English. They’re the hardiest; Essex fish. The foreign—I don’t just know what part—are bred in milk ponds; kept fresh and sweet, of course; and when they’re brought here, and come to be put in cold water, they soon die. In Essex they’re bred in cold water. They live about three years; that’s their lifetime if they’re properly seen to. I don’t know what kind of fish gold fish are. I’ve heard that they first came from China. No, I can’t read, and I’m very sorry for it. If I have time next winter I’ll get taught. Gentlemen sometimes ask me to sit down, and talk to me about fish, and their history (natural history), and I’m often at a loss, which I mightn’t be if I could read. If I have fish left after my day’s work, I never let them stay in the globe I’ve hawked them in, but put them into a large pan, a tub sometimes, three-parts full of water, where they have room. My customers are ladies and gentlemen, but I have sold to shopkeepers, such as buttermen, that often show gold fish and flowers in their shops. The fish don’t live long in the very small globes, but they’re put in them sometimes just to satisfy children. I’ve sold as many as two dozen at a time to stock a pond in a gentleman’s garden. It’s the best sale a little way out of town, in any direction. I sell six dozen a week, I think, one week with another; they’ll run as to price at 1s. apiece. That six dozen includes what I sell both in town and country. Perhaps I sell them nearly three-parts of the year. Some hawk all the year, but it’s a poor winter trade. Yes, I make a very fair living; 2s. 6d. or 3s. or so, a day, perhaps, on gold fish, when the weather suits.”
A man, to whom I was referred as an experienced gold fish-seller, had just returned, when I saw him, from the sale of a stock of new potatoes, peas, &c., which he “worked” in a donkey cart. He had not this season, he said, started in the gold-fish line, and did very little last year in it, as his costermongering trade kept steady, but his wife thought gold fish-selling was a better trade, and she always accompanied him in his street rounds; so he might take to it again. In his youth he was in the service of an old lady who had several pets, and among them were gold fish, of which she was very proud, always endeavouring to procure the finest, a street-seller being sure of her as a customer if he had fish larger or deeper or brighter-coloured than usual. She kept them both in stone cisterns, or small ponds, in her garden, and in glass globes in the house. Of these fish my informant had the care, and was often commended for his good management of them. After his mistress’s death he was very unlucky, he said, in his places. His last master having been implicated, he believed, in some gambling and bill-discounting transactions, left the kingdom suddenly, and my informant was without a character, for the master he served previously to the one who went off so abruptly was dead, and a character two years back was of no use, for people said, “But where have you been living since? Let me know all about that.” The man did not know what to do, for his money was soon exhausted: “I had nothing left,” he said, “which I could turn into money except a very good great coat, which had belonged to my last master, and which was given to me because he went off without paying me my wages. I thought of ’listing, for I was tired of a footman’s life, almost always in the house in such places as I had, but I was too old, I feared, and if I could have got over that I knew I should be rejected because I was getting bald. I was sitting thinking whatever could be done—I wasn’t married then—and had nobody to consult with; when I heard the very man as used to serve my old lady crying gold fish in the street. It struck me all of a heap, and I wonder I hadn’t thought of it before, when I recollected how well I’d managed the fish, that I’d sell gold fish too, and hawk it as he did, as it didn’t seem such a bad trade. So I asked the man all about it, and he told me, and I raised a sovereign on my great coat, and that was my start in the streets. I was nervous, and a little ’shamed at first, but I soon got over that, and in time turned my hand to fruit and other things. Gold fish saved my life, sir; I do believe that, for I might have pined into a consumption if I’d been without something to do, and something to eat much longer.”
If we calculate, in order to allow for the cessation of the trade during the winter, and often in the summer when costermongering is at its best, that but half the above-mentioned number of gold-fish sellers hawk in the streets and that for but half a year, each selling six dozen weekly at 12s. the dozen, we find 65,520 fish sold, at an outlay of 3276l. As the country is also “worked” by the London street-sellers, and the supply is derived from London, the number and amount may be doubled to include this traffic, or 131,040 fish sold, and 6552l. expended.
The number of tortoises sold in the streets of London is far greater than might be imagined, for it is a creature of no utility, and one which is inanimate in this country for half its life.
Of live tortoises, there are 20,000 annually imported from the port of Mogadore in Morocco. They are not brought over, as are the parrots, &c., of which I have spoken, for amusement or as private ventures of the seamen, but are regularly consigned from Jewish houses in Mogadore, to Jewish merchants in London. They are a freight of which little care is taken, as they are brought over principally as ballast in the ship’s hold, where they remain torpid.
The street-sellers of tortoises are costermongers of the smarter class. Sometimes the vendors of shells and foreign birds “work” also a few tortoises, and occasionally a wholesale dealer (the consignee of the Jewish house in Africa) will send out his own servants to sell barrow-loads of tortoises in the street on his own account. They are regularly ranged on the barrows, and certainly present a curious appearance—half-alive creatures as they are (when the weather is not of the warmest), brought from another continent for sale by thousands in the streets of London, and retention in the gardens and grounds of our civic villas. Of the number imported, one-half, or 10,000, are yearly sold in the streets by the several open-air dealers I have mentioned. The wholesale price is from 4s. to 6s. the dozen; they are retailed from 6d. to 1s., a very fine well-grown tortoise being sometimes worth 2s. 6d. The mass, however, are sold at 6d. to 9d. each, but many fetch 1s. They are bought for children, and to keep in gardens as I have said, and when properly fed on lettuce leaves, spinach, and similar vegetables, or on white bread sopped in water, will live a long time. If the tortoise be neglected in a garden, and have no access to his favourite food, he will eat almost any green thing which comes in his way, and so may commit ravages. During the winter, and the later autumn and earlier spring, the tortoise is torpid, and may be kept in a drawer or any recess, until the approach of summer “thaws” him, as I heard it called.
Calculating the average price of tortoises in street-sale at 8d. each, we find upwards of 333l. thus expended yearly.
I class together these several kinds of live creatures, as they are all “gathered” and sold by the same persons—principally by the men who supply bird-food, of whom I have given accounts in my statements concerning groundsel, chickweed, plaintain, and turf-selling.
The principal snail-sellers, however, are the turf-cutters, who are young and active men, while the groundsel-sellers are often old and infirm and incapable of working all night, as the necessities of the snail-trade often require. Of turf-cutters there were, at the time of my inquiry last winter, 42 in London, and of these full one-third are regular purveyors of snails, such being the daintier diet of the caged blackbirds and thrushes. These men obtain their supply of snails in the market-gardens, the proprietors willingly granting leave to any known or duly recommended person who will rid them of these depredators. Seven-eighths of the quantity gathered are sold to the bird-dealers, to whom the price is 2d. a quart. The other eighth is sold on a street round at from 3d. to 6d. the quart. A quart contains at least 80 snails, not heaped up, their shells being measured along with them. One man told me there were “100 snails to a fair quart.”
When it is moonlight at this season of the year, the snail gatherers sometimes work all night; at other times from an hour before sunset to the decline of daylight, the work being resumed at the dawn. To gather 12 quarts in a night, or a long evening and morning, is accounted a prosperous harvest. Half that quantity is “pretty tidy.” An experienced man said to me:—
“The best snail grounds, sir, you may take my word for it, is in Putney and Barnes. It’s the ‘greys’ we go for, the fellows with the shells on ’em; the black snails or slugs is no good to us. I think snails is the slowest got money of any. I don’t suppose they get’s scarcer, but there’s good seasons for snails and there’s bad. Warm and wet is best. We don’t take the little ’uns. They come next year. I may make 1l. a year, or a little more, in snails. In winter there’s hardly anything done in them, and the snails is on the ground; in summer they’re on the walls or leaves. They’ll keep six months without injury; they’ll keep the winter round indeed in a proper place.”
I am informed that the 14 snail gatherers on the average gather six dozen quarts each in a year, which supplies a total of 12,096 quarts, or individually, 1,189,440 snails. The labourers in the gardens, I am informed, may gather somewhat more than an equal quantity,—all being sold to the bird-shops; so that altogether the supply of snails for the caged thrushes and blackbirds of London is about two millions and a half. Computing them at 24,000 quarts, and only at 2d. a quart, the outlay is 200l. per annum.
The Frogs sold by street-people are, at the rate of about 36 dozen a year, disposed of in equal proportion to University and King’s Colleges. Only two men collect the frogs, one for each hospital. They are charged 1d. each:—“I’ve sometimes,” said one of the frog-purveyors, “come on a place where I could have got six or seven dozen in a day, but that’s mostly been when I didn’t want them. At other times I’ve gone days without collaring a single frog. I only want them four times a year, and four or five dozen at a time. The low part of Hampstead’s the best ground for them, I think. The doctors like big fellows. They keep them in water ’til they’re wanted to dissect.” One man thought that there might be 50 more frogs or upwards ordered yearly, through the bird-shops, for experiments under air-pumps, &c. This gives about 500 frogs sold yearly by the street-people. One year, however, I was told, the supply was larger, for a Camberwell gentleman ordered 40 frogs to stock a watery place at the foot of his garden, as he liked to hear and see them.
The Toad trade is almost a nonentity. One man, who was confident he had as good a trade in that line as any of his fellows, told me that last year he only supplied one toad; in one year, he forgot the precise time, he collected ten. He was confident that from 12 to 24 a year was now the extent of the toad trade, perhaps 20. There was no regular price, and the men only “work to order.” “It’s just what the shopkeeper, mostly a herbalist, likes to give.” I was told, from 1d. to 6d. according to size. “I don’t know what they’re wanted for, something about the doctors, I believe. But if you want any toads, sir, for anything, I know a place between Hampstead and Willesden, where there’s real stunners.”
Worms are collected in small quantities by the street-sellers, and very grudgingly, for they are to be supplied gratuitously to the shopkeepers who are the customers of the turf-cutters, and snail and worm collectors. “They expects it as a parquisite, like.” One man told me that they only gathered ground worms for the bird-fanciers.
Of the Snakes and Hedgehogs I have already spoken, when treating of the collection of birds’-nests. I am told that some few glow-worms are collected.