INTRODUCTION._London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2

In commencing a new volume I would devote a few pages to the

consideration of the import of the facts already collected concerning

the London Street-Folk, not only as regards the street-people

themselves, but also in connection with the general society of which

they form so large a proportion.

The precise extent of the proportion which the Street-Traders bear

to the rest of the Metropolitan Population is the first point to be

evolved; for the want, the ignorance, and the vice of a street-life

being in a direct ratio to the numbers, it becomes of capital

importance that we should know how many are seeking to pick up a

livelihood in the public thoroughfares. This is the more essential

because the Government returns never _have_ given us, and probably

never _will_ give us, any correct information respecting it. The

Census of 1841 set down the “Hawkers, Hucksters, and Pedlars” of the

Metropolis as numbering 2045; and from the inquiries I have made among

the street-sellers as to the means taken to obtain a full account

of their numbers for the next population return, the Census of 1851

appears likely to be about as correct in its statements concerning the

Street Traders and Performers as the one which preceded it.

According to the accounts which have been collected during the

progress of this work, the number of the London Street-People, so

far as the inquiry has gone, is upwards of 40,000. This sum is made

up of 30,000 Costermongers; 2000 Street-Sellers of “Green-Stuff,” as

Watercresses, Chickweed, and Groundsell, Turf, &c.; 4000 Street Sellers

of Eatables and Drinkables; 1000 selling Stationery, Books, Papers,

and Engravings in the streets; and 4000 other street-sellers vending

manufactured articles, either of metal, crockery, textile, chemical, or

miscellaneous substances, making altogether 41,000, or in round numbers

say 40,000 individuals. The 30,000 costermongers may be said to include

12,000 men, 6000 women, and 12,000 children.

The above numbers comprise the main body of people selling in

the London streets; hence if we assert that, with the vendors of

second-hand articles, as old metal, glass, linen, clothes, &c., and

mineral productions, such as coke, salt, and sand, there are about

45,000 street-traders in the Metropolis, we shall not, I am satisfied,

be very far from the truth.

The value of the Capital, or Stock in Trade, of these people, though

individually trifling, amounts, collectively, to a considerable sum

of money--indeed, to very nearly 40,000_l._, or at the rate of about

1_l._ per head. Under the term Capital are included the donkeys,

barrows, baskets, stalls, trays, boards, and goods belonging to the

several street-traders; and though the stock of the water-cress, the

small-ware, the lucifer, the flower, or the chickweed and groundsell

seller may not exceed in value 1_s._, and the basket or tray upon

which it is carried barely half that sum, that of the more prosperous

costermonger, possessed of his barrow and donkey; or of the Cheap John,

with his cart filled with hardware; or the Packman, with his bale of

soft wares at his back, may be worth almost as many pounds as the

others are pence.

The gross amount of trade done by the London Street-Sellers in the

course of the year is so large that the mind is at first unable to

comprehend how, without reckless extravagance, want can be in any way

associated with the class. After the most cautious calculation, the

results having been checked and re-checked in a variety of ways, so

that the conclusion arrived at might be somewhat near and certainly

not beyond the truth, it appears that the “_takings_” of the London

Street-Sellers cannot be said to be less than 2,500,000_l._ per annum.

But vast as this sum may seem, and especially when considered as only a

portion of the annual expenditure of the Metropolitan Poor, still, when

we come to spread the gross yearly receipts over 40,000 people, we find

that the individual takings are but 62_l._ per annum, which (allowing

the rate of profit to be in all cases even 50 per cent., though I am

convinced it is often much less) gives to each street-trader an annual

income of 20_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._, or within a fraction of 8_s._ a week,

all the year round. And when we come to deduct from this the loss

by perishable articles, the keep of donkeys, the wear and tear, or

hire, of barrows--the cost of stalls and baskets, together with the

interest on stock-money (generally at the rate of 4_s._ a week--and

often 1_s._ a day--for 1_l._, or 1040_l._ per cent. per annum), we

may with safety assert that the average gain or clear income of the

Metropolitan Street-Sellers is rather under than over 7_s._ 6_d._ a

week. Some of the more expert street-traders may clear 10_s._ or even

15_s._ weekly throughout the year, while the weekly profit of the less

expert, the old people, and the children, may be said to be 3_s._ 6_d._

These incomes, however, are the average of the gross yearly profits

rather than the regular weekly gains; the consequence is, that though

they might be sufficient to keep the majority of the street-sellers in

comparative comfort, were they constant and capable of being relied

upon, from week to week--but being variable and uncertain, and rising

sometimes from nothing in the winter to 1_l._ a week in the summer,

when street commodities are plentiful and cheap, and the poorer classes

have money wherewith to purchase them--and fluctuating moreover, even

at the best of times, according as the weather is wet or fine, and the

traffic of the streets consequently diminished or augmented--it is but

natural that the people subject to such alternations should lack the

prudence and temperance of those whose incomes are more regular and

uniform.

To place the above facts clearly before the reader the following table

has been prepared. The first column states the titles of the several

classes of street-sellers; the second, the number of individuals

belonging to each of these classes; the third, the value of their

respective capitals or stock in trade; the fourth, the gross amount

of trade done by them respectively every year; the fifth, the average

yearly takings of each class; and the sixth, their average weekly

gains. This gives us, as it were, a bird’s-eye view of the earnings

and pecuniary condition of the various kinds of street-sellers already

treated of. It is here cited, as indeed all the statistics in this

work are, as an approximation to the truth rather than a definite and

accurate result.

-------------------------------------+-----------+--------------+----------------------+-----------+---------

-------------------------------------+-----------+--------------+----------------------+-----------+---------

COSTERMONGERS[1] } | | | £ | |

Street-Sellers of Wet Fish } | | | 1,177,200 } | |

„ „ Dry fish } | | | 127,000 } | |

„ „ Shell Fish } | | | 156,600 } | |

} | | | --------- } | |

} | | | 1,460,800 } | |

„ „ Green Fruit } | | | 332,400 } | |

„ „ Dry Fruit } | 30,000[2] | £25,000 | 1,000 } | £60 | 8_s._

„ „ Vegetables } | | | 292,200 } | |

} | | | --------- } | |

„ „ Game, Poultry, } | | | 625,600 } | |

Rabbits, &c. } | | | 80,000 } | |

} | | | 14,800 } | |

„ „ Flowers, } | | | --------- } | |

Roots &c. } | | | 2,181,200 } | |

| | | | |

Watercresses[3] | 1,000 | 87 | 13,900 | 13 | 3_s._ 6_d._

Plantain[4] | 1,000 | 42 | 14,000 | 14 | 5_s._

Turf-Cutters and Sellers | 40 | 20 | 570 | 14 | 5_s._ 6_d._

| | | | |

DRINKABLES | 4,000 | 9,000 | 203,100 | 50 | 10_s._

| | | | |

LITERATURE, AND THE FINE ARTS | 1,000 | 400 | 33,400 | 30 | 8_s._

| | | | |

or Miscellaneous Substances | 4,000 | 2,800 | 188,200 | 47 | 10_s._

-------------------------------------+-----------+--------------+----------------------+-----------+---------

| 41,040 | £37,529 | £2,634,370 | £60 | 8_s._

-------------------------------------+-----------+--------------+----------------------+-----------+---------

Now, according to the above estimate, it would appear that the gross

annual receipts of the entire body of street-sellers (for there are

many besides those above specified--as for instance, the vendors

of second-hand articles, &c.) may be estimated in round numbers at

3,000,000_l._ sterling, and their clear income at about 1,000,000_l._

per annum. Hence, we are enabled to perceive the importance of

the apparently insignificant traffic of the streets; for were the

street-traders to be prohibited from pursuing their calling, and so

forced to apply for relief at the several metropolitan unions, the

poor-rates would be at the least doubled. The total sum expended in

the relief of the London poor, during 1848, was 725,000_l._, but this

we see is hardly three-fourths of the income of the street-traders.

Those, therefore, who would put an end to the commerce of our streets,

should reflect whether they would like to do so at the cost of doubling

the present poor-rates and of reducing one-fortieth part of the entire

metropolitan population from a state of comparative independence to

absolute pauperism.

However unsatisfactory it may be to the aristocratic pride of the

wealthy commercial classes, it cannot be denied that a very important

element of the trade of this vast capital--this marvellous centre of

the commerce of the world--I cite the stereotype phrases of civic

eloquence, for they are at least truths--it is still undeniable, I

say, that a large proportion of the commerce of the capital of Great

Britain is in the hands of the Street-Folk. This simple enunciation

might appear a mere platitude were it not that the street-sellers are

a _proscribed class_. They are driven from stations to which long

possession might have been thought to give them a quasi legal right;

driven from them at the capricious desire of the shopkeepers, some of

whom have had bitter reason, by the diminution of their own business,

to repent their interference. They are bandied about at the will of a

police-officer. They must “move on” and not obstruct a thoroughfare

which may be crammed and blocked with the carriages of the wealthy

until to cross the road on foot is a danger. They are, in fine, a body

numbering thousands, who are allowed to live in the prosecution of

the most ancient of all trades, sale or barter in the open air, _by

sufferance alone_. They are classed as unauthorized or illegal and

intrusive traders, though they _“turn over” millions in a year_.

The authorities, it is true, do not sanction any general arbitrary

enforcement of the legal proscription of the Street-Folk, but they have

no option if a section of shopkeepers choose to say to them, “Drive

away from our doors these street-people.” It appears to be sufficient

for an inferior class of tradesmen--for such the meddlers with the

street-folk generally seem to be--merely to desire such a removal in

order to accomplish it. It is not necessary for them to say in excuse,

“We pay heavy rents, and rates, and taxes, and are forced to let our

lodgings accordingly; we pay for licences, and some of us as well pay

fines for giving short weight to poor people, and that, too, when it

is hardly safe to give short weight to our richer patrons; but what

rates, taxes, or licences do these street-traders pay? Their lodgings

may be dear enough, but their rates are nominally nothing” (being

charged in the rent of their rooms). “From taxes they are blessedly

exempt. They are called upon to pay no imposts on their property or

income; they defray merely the trifling duties on their tobacco, beer,

tea, sugar, coffee” (though these by the way--the chief articles in

the excise and customs returns--make up one-half of the revenue of

the country). “They ought to be put down. _We_ can supply all that is

wanting. What may become of _them_ is simply their own concern.”

The Act 50 Geo. III., c. 41, requires that every person “carrying to

sell or exposing to sale any goods, wares, or merchandize,” shall pay

a yearly duty. But according to s. 23, “nothing in this Act shall

extend to prohibit any person or persons from selling (by hawking in

the streets) any printed papers licensed by authority; or any fish,

fruit, or victuals.” Among the privileged articles are also included

barm or yeast, and coals. The same Act, moreover, contains nothing to

prohibit the maker of any home-manufacture from exposing his goods

to sale in any town-market or fair, nor any tinker, cooper, glazier,

or other artizan, from going about and carrying the materials of his

business. The unlicensed itinerant vendors of such things however as

lucifer-matches, boot-laces, braces, fuzees, or any wares indeed, not

of their own manufacture, are violators of the law, and subject to a

penalty of 10_l._, or three months’ imprisonment for each offence. It

is in practice, however, only in the hawking of such articles as those

on which the duty is heavy and of considerable value to the revenue

(such as tea, tobacco, or cigars), that there is any actual check in

the London streets.

Nevertheless, a large proportion of the street-trading without a

licence is contrary to law, and the people seeking to obtain a living

by such means are strictly liable to fine or imprisonment, while even

those street-traders whom the Act specially exempts--as for instance

the street-sellers of fish, fruit, and vegetables, and of eatables and

drinkables, as well as the street artizans, and who are said to have

the right of “exposing their goods to sale in any market or fair in

every city, borough, town-corporate, and market-town”--even these, I

say, are liable to be punished for obstructing the highway whenever

they attempt to do so.

Now these are surely anomalies which it is high time, in these

free-trade days, should cease. _The endeavour to obtain an honest and

independent livelihood should subject no man to fine or imprisonment_;

nor should the poor hawker--the neediest perhaps of all tradesmen--be

required to pay 4_l._ a year for the liberty to carry on his business

when the wealthy shopkeeper can do so “scot-free.” Moreover, it is a

glaring iniquity that the rich tradesman should have it in his power,

by complaining to the police, to deprive his poorer rival of the

right to dispose of his goods in the streets. It is often said, in

justification, that as the shopkeepers pay the principal portion of

the rates and taxes, _they_ must be protected in the exercise of their

business. But this, in the first place, is far from the truth. As

regards the taxes, the poorer classes pay nearly half of the national

imposts: they pay the chief portion of the malt duty, and that is in

round numbers 5,000,000_l._ a year; the greater part of the spirit

duty, which is 4,350,000_l._; the tobacco duty, 4,250,000_l._; the

sugar duty, 4,500,000_l._; and the duty on tea, 5,330,000_l._; making

altogether 23,430,000_l._, out of about 50,000,000_l._ Concerning the

rates, however, it is not so easy to estimate what proportion the poor

people contribute towards the local burdens of the country; but if

they are householders, they have to pay quota of the parish and county

expenses directly, and, if lodgers, indirectly in the rent of their

apartments. Hence it is evident, that to consider the street-sellers

unworthy of being protected in the exercise of their calling because

they pay neither rates nor taxes, is to commit a gross injustice, not

only to the street-sellers themselves by forcing them to contribute

in their tea and sugar, their beer, gin, and tobacco, towards the

expenses of a Government which exerts itself rather to injure than

benefit them, but likewise to the ratepayers of the parish; for it is

a necessary consequence, if the shopkeepers have the power to deprive

the street-dealers of their living whenever the out-of-door tradesmen

are thought to interfere with the business of those indoors (perhaps

by underselling them), that the street-dealers, being unable to live

by their own labour, must betake themselves to the union and live upon

the labour of the parishioners, and thus the shopkeepers may be said to

enrich themselves at the expense, not only of the poor street-people,

but likewise of their brother ratepayers.

Nor can it be said that the _Street-Sellers_ are interlopers upon these

occasions, for if ancient custom be referred to, it will be found that

the Shopkeepers are the real intruders, they having succeeded the

Hawkers, who were, in truth, the original distributors of the produce

of the country.

But though no body of Shopkeepers, nor, indeed, any other class of

people _individually_, should possess the power to deprive the Hawkers

of what is often the last shift of struggling independence--the sale

of a few goods in the street--still it is evident that the _general_

convenience of the public must be consulted, and that, were the

Street-Traders to be allowed the right of pitching in any thoroughfare

they pleased, many of our principal streets would be blocked up with

costers’ barrows, and the kerb of Regent-street possibly crowded like

that of the New Cut, with the hawkers and hucksters that would be sure

to resort thither; while those thoroughfares which, like Fleet-street

and Cheapside, are now almost impassable at certain times of the day,

from the increased traffic of the City, would be rendered still more

impervious by the throngs of street-sellers that the crowd alone would

be sure to attract to the spot.

Under the circumstances, therefore, it becomes necessary that we

should provide for the vast body of Street-Sellers some authorized

place of resort, where they might be both entitled and permitted to

obtain an honest living according to Act of Parliament. To think for a

moment of “putting down” street-trading is to be at once ignorant of

the numbers and character of the people pursuing it. To pass an Act

declaring 50,000 individuals rogues and vagabonds, would be to fill our

prisons or our workhouses with men who would willingly earn their own

living. Besides, the poor _will_ buy of the poor. Subject the petty

trader to fine and imprisonment as you please, still the very sympathy

and patronage of the petty purchaser will in this country always call

into existence a large body of purveyors to the poorer classes. I

would suggest, therefore, and I do so after much consideration, and

an earnest desire to meet all the difficulties of the case, that a

number of “poor men’s markets” be established throughout London, by

the purchase or rental of plots of ground in the neighbourhood of

the present street-markets; that a small toll be paid by each of the

Street-Sellers attending such markets, for the right to vend their

goods there--that the keeper or beadle of each market be likewise an

Inspector of Weights and Measures, and that any hawker found using

“slangs” of any kind, or resorting to any imposition whatever, be

prohibited entering the market for the future--that the conduct and

regulation of the markets be under the direction of a committee

consisting of an equal number of shareholders, sellers, and working

men--the latter as representatives of the buyers--and that the surplus

funds (if any, after paying all expenses, together with a fair interest

to the shareholders of the market) should be devoted to the education

of the children of the hawkers before and after the hours of sale.

There might also be a penny savings’-bank in connection with each of

the markets, and a person stationed at the gates on the conclusion of

the day’s business, to collect all he could from the hawkers as they

left.

There are already a sufficient number of poor-markets established at

the East end of the town--though of a different character, such as

the Old Clothes Exchange--to prove the practicability of the proposed

plan among even the pettiest traders. And I am convinced, after long

deliberation, that such institutions could not but tend to produce a

rapid and marked improvement in the character of the London Hawkers.

This is the only way evident to me of meeting the evil of our present

street-life--an evil which is increasing every day, and which

threatens, ere long, almost to overwhelm us with its abominations. To

revile the street-people is stark folly. Their ignorance is no demerit

to them, even as it is no merit to us to know the little that we do.

If we really wish the people better, let us, I say again, do for them

what others have done for us, and without which (humiliating as it may

be to our pride) we should most assuredly have been as they are. It is

the continued forgetfulness of this truth--a truth which our wretched

self-conceit is constantly driving from our minds--that prevents our

stirring to improve the condition of these poor people; though, if we

knew but the whole of the facts concerning them, and their sufferings

and feelings, our very fears alone for the safety of the state would

be sufficient to make us do something in their behalf. I am quite

satisfied, from all I have seen, that there are thousands in this great

metropolis ready to rush forth, on the least evidence of a rising of

the people, to commit the most savage and revolting excesses--men who

have no knowledge of the government of the country but as an armed

despotism, preventing their earning their living, and who hate all

law, because it is made to appear to them merely as an organised

tyranny--men, too, who have neither religious nor moral principles to

restrain the exercise of their grossest passions when once roused, and

men who, from our very neglect of them, are necessarily and essentially

the dangerous classes, whose existence we either rail at or deplore.

The rate of increase among the street-traders it is almost impossible

to arrive at. The population returns afford us no data for the

calculation, and the street-people themselves are unable to supply the

least information on the subject; all they can tell us is, that about

20 years ago they took a guinea for every shilling that they get now.

This heavy reduction of their receipts they attribute to the cheapness

of commodities, and the necessity to carry and sell a greater quantity

of goods in order to get the same profit, as well as to the increase

in the number of street-traders; but when questioned as to the extent

of such increase, their answers are of the vaguest possible kind.

Arranging the street-people, however, as we have done, into three

distinct classes, according to the causes which have led to their

induction into a street-life, viz., those who are _born_ and _bred_

to the streets--those who _take_ to the streets--and those who are

_driven_ to the streets, it is evident that the main elements of any

extraordinary increase of the street-folk must be sought for among the

two latter classes. Among the first the increase will, at the utmost,

be at the same rate as the ordinary increase of the population--viz.,

1-1/2 per cent. per annum; for the English costermongers and

street-traders in general appear to be remarkable rather for the small

than the large number of their children, so that, even supposing all

the boys and girls of the street-sellers to be brought up to the

same mode of life as their father, we could not thus account for any

_enormous_ increase among the street-folk. With those, however, who

_take_ to the streets from the love of a “roving life,” or the desire

to “shake a free leg”--to quote the phrases of the men themselves--or

are _driven_ to the streets from an inability to obtain employment

at the pursuit to which they have been accustomed, the case is far

different.

That there is every day a greater difficulty for working men to live

by their labour--either from the paucity of work, or from the scanty

remuneration given for it--surely no one will be disposed to question

when every one is crying out that the country is over-populated.

Such being the case, it is evident that the number of mechanics in

the streets must be daily augmenting, for, as I have before said,

street-trading is the last shift of an unemployed artizan to keep

himself and his family from the “Union.” The workman out of work,

sooner than starve or go to the parish for relief, takes to making

up and vending on his own account the articles of his craft, whilst

the underpaid workman, sooner than continue toiling from morning till

midnight for a bare subsistence, resorts to the easier trade of buying

and selling. Again, even among the less industrious of the working

classes, the general decline in wages has tended, and is continually

tending, to make their labour more and more irksome to them. There is

a cant abroad at the present day, that there is a special pleasure in

industry, and hence we are taught to regard all those who object to

work as appertaining to the class of natural vagabonds; but where is

the man among us that loves labour? for work or labour is merely that

which is irksome to perform, and which every man requires a certain

amount of remuneration to induce him to perform. If men really loved

work they would pay to be allowed to do it rather than require to be

paid for doing it. That occupation which is agreeable to us we call

amusement, and that and that only which is disagreeable we term labour,

or drudgery, according to the intensity of its irksomeness. Hence as

the amount of remuneration given by way of inducement to a man to go

through a certain amount of work becomes reduced, so does the stimulus

to work become weakened, and this, through the decline of wages, is

what is daily taking place among us. Our operatives are continually

ceasing to be producers, and passing from the creators of wealth

into the exchangers or distributors of it; becoming mere tradesmen,

subsisting on the labour of other people rather than their own, and

so adding to the very non-producers, the great number of whom is the

main cause of the poverty of those who make all our riches. To teach

a people the difficulty of living by labour is to inculcate the most

dangerous of all lessons, and this is what we are daily doing. Our

trading classes are increasing at a most enormous rate, and so giving

rise to that exceeding competition, and consequently, to that continual

reduction of prices--all of which must ultimately fall upon the working

man. This appears to me to be the main cause of the increase of the

London street people, and one for which I candidly confess I see no

remedy.