I have already treated of the street-commerce in such things as
are presented to the public in the form in which they are to be
cooked, eaten, drank, or used. They have comprised the necessaries,
delicacies, or luxuries of the street; they have been either the raw
food or preparations ready cooked or mixed for immediate consumption,
as in the case of the street eatables and drinkables; or else they were
the proceeds of taste (or its substitute) in art or literature, or of
usefulness or ingenuity in manufacture.
All these many objects of street-commerce may be classified in one
well-known word: they are bought and sold _first-hand_. I have next
to deal with the _second-hand_ sellers of our streets; and in this
division perhaps will be found more that is novel, curious, and
interesting, than in that just completed.
Mr. Babbage, in his “Economy of Machinery and Manufactures,” says,
concerning the employment of materials of little value: “The worn-out
saucepan and tin-ware of our kitchens, when beyond the reach of the
tinker’s art, are not utterly worthless. We sometimes meet carts loaded
with old tin kettles and worn-out iron coal-skuttles traversing our
streets. These have not yet completed their useful course; the less
corroded parts are cut into strips, punched with small holes, and
varnished with a coarse black varnish for the use of the trunk-maker,
who protects the edges and angles of his boxes with them; the remainder
are conveyed to the manufacturing chemists in the outskirts, who employ
them in combination with pyroligneous acid, in making a black dye for
the use of calico-printers.”
Mr. Babbage has here indicated one portion of the nature of the
street-trade in second-hand articles--the application of worn-out
materials to a new purpose. But this second-hand commerce of the
streets--for a street-commerce it mainly is, both in selling and
buying--has a far greater extent than that above indicated, and many
ramifications. Under the present head I shall treat only of street
_sellers_, unless when a street _purchase_ may be so intimately
connected with a street _sale_ that for the better understanding of the
subject it may be necessary to sketch both. Of the STREET-BUYERS and
the STREET-FINDERS, or COLLECTORS, both connected with the second-hand
trade, I shall treat separately.
In London, where many, in order to live, struggle to extract a meal
from the possession of an article which seems utterly worthless,
nothing must be wasted. Many a thing which in a country town is
kicked by the penniless out of their path even, or examined and left
as meet only for the scavenger’s cart, will in London be snatched
up as a prize; it is money’s worth. A crushed and torn bonnet, for
instance, or, better still, an old hat, napless, shapeless, crownless,
and brimless, will be picked up in the street, and carefully placed
in a bag with similar things by one class of street-folk--the
STREET-FINDERS. And to tempt the well-to-do to _sell_ their second-hand
goods, the street-trader offers the barter of shapely china or shining
glass vessels; or blooming fuchsias or fragrant geraniums for “the
rubbish,” or else, in the spirit of the hero of the fairy tale, he
exchanges, “new lamps for old.”
Of the street sale of second-hand articles, with all the collateral or
incidental matter bearing immediately on the subject, I shall treat
under the following heads, or under such heads as really constitute
the staple of the business, dismissing such as may be trifling or
exceptional. Of these traffickers, then, there are five classes, the
mere enumeration of the objects of their traffic being curious enough:--
1. _The Street-Sellers of Old Metal Articles_, such as knives, forks,
and butchers’ steels; saws, hammers, pincers, files, screw-drivers,
planes, chisels, and other tools (more frequently those of the workers
in wood than of other artisans); old scissors and shears; locks,
keys, and hinges; shovels, fire-irons, trivets, chimney-cranes,
fenders, and fire-guards; warming-pans (but rarely now); flat and
Italian irons, curling-tongs; rings, horse-shoes, and nails; coffee
and tea-pots, urns, trays, and canisters; pewter measures; scales and
weights; bed-screws and keys; candlesticks and snuffers; niggards,
generally called niggers (_i. e._, false bottoms for grates); tobacco
and snuff-boxes and spittoons; door-plates, numbers, knockers, and
escutcheons; dog-collars and dog-chains (and other chains); gridirons;
razors; coffee-mills; lamps; swords and daggers; gun and pistol-barrels
and locks (and occasionally the entire weapon); bronze and cast metal
figures; table, chair, and sofa castors; bell-pulls and bells; the
larger buckles and other metal (most frequently brass) articles of
harness furniture; compositors’ sticks (the depositories of the type
in the first instance); the multifarious kinds of tin-wares; stamps;
cork-screws; barrel-taps; ink-stands; a multiplicity of culinary
vessels and of old metal lids; footmen, broken machinery, and parts of
machinery, as odd wheels, and screws of all sizes, &c., &c.
2. _The Street-Sellers of Old Linen, Cotton, and Woollen Articles_,
such as old sheeting for towels; old curtains of dimity, muslin,
cotton, or moreen; carpeting; blanketing for house-scouring cloths;
ticking for beds and pillows; sacking for different purposes, according
to its substance and quality; fringes; and stocking-legs for the supply
of “jobbing worsted,” and for re-footing.
I may here observe that in the street-trade, second-hand linen
or cotton is often made to pay a double debt. The shirt-collars
sold, sometimes to a considerable extent and very cheap, in the
street-markets, are made out of linen which has previously been used in
some other form; so is it with white waistcoats and other habiliments.
Of the street-folk who vend such wares I shall speak chiefly in the
fourth division of this subject, viz. the second-hand street-sellers of
miscellaneous articles.
3. _The Street-Sellers of Old Glass and Crockery_, including the
variety of bottles, odd, or in sets, or in broken sets; pans, pitchers,
wash-hand basins, and other crockery utensils; china ornaments;
pier, convex, and toilet glasses (often without the frames); pocket
ink-bottles; wine, beer, and liqueur glasses; decanters; glass
fish-bowls (occasionally); salt-cellars; sugar-basins; and lamp and gas
glasses.
4. _The Street-Sellers of Miscellaneous Articles._ These are such as
cannot properly be classed under any of the three preceding heads,
and include a mass of miscellaneous commodities: Accordions and other
musical instruments; brushes of all descriptions; shaving-boxes
and razor-strops; baskets of many kinds; stuffed birds, with and
without frames; pictures, with and without frames; desks, work-boxes,
tea-caddies, and many articles of old furniture; boot-jacks and hooks;
shoe-horns; cartouche-boxes; pocket and opera glasses; rules, and
measures in frames; backgammon, and chess or draught boards and men,
and dice; boxes of dominoes; cribbage-boards and boxes, sometimes
with old packs of cards; pope-boards (boards used in playing the
game of “Pope,” or “Pope Joan,” though rarely seen now); “fish,” or
card counters of bone, ivory, or mother of pearl (an equal rarity);
microscopes (occasionally); an extensive variety of broken or faded
things, new or long kept, such as magic-lanterns, dissected maps or
histories, &c., from the toy warehouses and shops; Dutch clocks;
barometers; wooden trays; shells; music and books (the latter being
often odd volumes of old novels); tee-totums, and similar playthings;
ladies’ head-combs; umbrellas and parasols; fishing-rods and nets;
reins, and other parts of cart, gig, and “two-horse” harness; boxes
full of “odds and ends” of old leather, such as water-pipes; and a mass
of imperfect metal things, which had “better be described,” said an old
dealer, “as from a needle to an anchor.”
5. _The Street-Sellers of Old Apparel_, including the body habiliments,
constituting alike men’s, women’s, boys’, girls’, and infants’ attire:
as well as hats, caps, gloves, belts, and stockings; shirts and
shirt-fronts (“dickeys”); handkerchiefs, stocks, and neck-ties; furs,
such as victorines, boas, tippets, and edgings; beavers and bonnets;
and the other several, and sometimes not easily describable, articles
which constitute female fashionable or ordinary wear.
I may here observe, that of the wares which once formed a portion of
the stock of the street-sellers of the fourth and fifth divisions,
but which are now no longer objects of street sale, were, till within
the last few years, fans; back and shoulder boards (to make girls
grow straight!); several things at one time thought indispensable to
every well-nurtured child, such as a coral and bells; belts, sashes,
scabbards, epaulettes, feathers or plumes, hard leather stocks, and
other indications of the volunteer, militia, and general military
spirit of the early part of the present century.
* * * * *
Before proceeding immediately with my subject, I may say a few words
concerning what is, in the estimation of some, a _second-hand_ matter.
I allude to the many uses to which that which is regarded, and indeed
termed, “offal,” or “refuse,” or “waste,” is put in a populous city.
This may be evidenced in the multiform uses to which the “offal” of
the animals which are slaughtered for our use are put. It is still
more curiously shown in the uses of the offal of the animals which are
killed, not for our use, but for that of our dogs and cats; and to this
part of the subject I shall more especially confine the remarks I have
to make. My observations on the uses of other waste articles will be
found in another place.
What in the butcher’s trade is considered the offal of a bullock, was
explained by Mr. Deputy Hicks, before the last Select Committee of
the House of Commons on Smithfield Market: “The carcass,” he said,
“as it hangs clear of everything else, is the carcass, and all else
constitutes the offal.”
The carcass may be briefly termed the four quarters, whereas the offal
then comprises the hide, which in the average-sized bullock that is
slaughtered in London is worth 12_s._; but with the hide are sold the
horns, which are worth about 10_d._ to the comb-makers, who use them
to make their “tortoise-shell” articles, and for similar purposes.
The hoofs are worth 2_d._ to the glue-makers, or prussiate of potash
manufacturers. What “comes out of a bullock,” to use the trade term,
is the liver, the lights (or lungs), the stomach, the intestinal canal
(sometimes 36 yards when extended), and the gall duct. These portions,
with the legs (called “feet” in the trade), form what is styled the
tripe-man’s portion, and are disposed of to him by the butcher for
5_s._ 6_d._ Separately, the value of the liver is 8_d._, of the lights,
6_d._ (both for dogs’-meat), and of the legs which are worked into
tooth-brush handles, dominoes, &c., 1_s._ The remaining 3_s._ 4_d._ is
the worth of the other portion. The heart averages rather more than
1_s._; the kidneys the same; the head, 1_s._ 9_d._; the blood (which
is “let down the drain” in all but the larger slaughtering houses)
1-1/2_d._ (being 3_d._ for 9 gallons); the tallow (7 stone) 14_s._; and
the tail, I was told, “from nothing to 2_s._,” averaging about 6_d._;
the tongue, 2_s._ 6_d._ Thus the offal sells, altogether, first hand,
for 1_l._ 18_s._ 6_d._
I will now show the uses to which what is far more decidedly pronounced
“offal,” and what is much more “second-hand” in popular estimation,
viz., a dead horse, is put, and even a dead horse’s offal, and I will
then show the difference in this curious trade between the Parisian and
London horse offal.
The greatest horse-slaughtering establishments in France are at
Montfaucon, a short distance from the capital. When the animal has been
killed, it is “cut up,” and the choicer portions of the flesh are eaten
by the work-people of the establishment, and by the hangers-on and
jobbers who haunt the locality of such places, and are often men of a
desperate character. The rest of the carcass is sold for the feeding of
dogs, cats, pigs, and poultry, a portion being also devoted to purposes
of manure. The flesh on a horse of average size and fatness is 350
lbs., which sells for 1_l._ 12_s._ 6_d._ But this is only one of the
uses of the dead animal.
The skin is sold to a tanner for 10_s._ 6_d._ The hoofs to a
manufacturer of sal ammonia, or similar preparations, or of Prussian
blue, or to a comb or toy-maker, for 1_s._ 4_d._ The old shoes and the
shoe-nails are worth 2-1/2_d._ The hair of the mane and tail realizes
1-1/2_d._ The tendons are disposed of, either fresh or dried, to
glue-makers for 3_d._--a pound of dried tendons (separated from the
muscles) being about the average per horse. The bones are bought by
the turners, cutlers, fan-makers, and the makers of ivory black and sal
ammoniac, 90 lbs. being an average weight of the animal’s bones, and
realizing 2_s._ The intestines wrought into the different preparations
required of the gut-makers, or for manure, are worth 2_d._
The blood is used by the sugar-refiners, and by the fatteners of
poultry, pigeons, and turkeys (which devour it greedily), or else for
manure. When required for manure it is dried--20 lbs. of dried blood,
which is the average weight, being worth 1_s._ 9_d._ The fat is removed
from the carcass and melted down. It is in demand for the making of
gas, of soap, and (when very fine) of--bear’s grease; also for the
dubbing or grease applied to harness and to shoe-leather. This fat when
consumed in lamps communicates a greater portion of heat than does
oil, and is therefore preferred by the makers of glass toys, and by
enamellers and polishers. A horse at Montfaucon has been known to yield
60 lbs. of fat, but this is an extreme case; a yield of 12 lbs. is the
produce of a horse in fair condition, but at these slaughterhouses
there are so many lean and sorry jades that 8 lbs. may be taken as
an average of fat, and at a value of 6_d._ per lb. Nor does the list
end here; the dead and putrid flesh is made to teem with life, and to
produce food for other living creatures. A pile of pieces of flesh,
six inches in height, layer on layer, is slightly covered with hay or
straw; the flies soon deposit their eggs in the attractive matter,
and thus maggots are bred, the most of which are used as food for
pheasants, and in a smaller degree of domestic fowls, and as baits for
fish. These maggots give, or are supposed to give, a “game flavour” to
poultry, and a very “high” flavour to pheasants. One horse’s flesh thus
produces maggots worth 1_s._ 5_d._ The total amount, then, realized on
the dead horse, which may cost 10_s._ 6_d._, is as follows:--
£ _s._ _d._
The flesh 1 12 6
The skin 0 10 6
The hoofs 0 1 4
The shoes and nails 0 0 2-1/2
The mane and tail 0 0 1-1/2
The tendons 0 0 3
The bones 0 2 0
The intestines 0 0 2
The blood 0 1 9
The fat 0 4 0
The maggots 0 1 5
-----------
£2 14 3
The carcass of a French horse is also made available in another
way, and which relates to a subject I have lately treated of--the
destruction of rats; but this is not a regularly-accruing emolument.
Montfaucon swarms with rats, and to kill them the carcass of a horse
is placed in a room, into which the rats gain access through openings
in the floor contrived for the purpose. At night the rats are lured by
their keenness of scent to the room, and lured in numbers; the openings
are then closed, and they are prisoners. In one room 16,000 were killed
in four weeks. The Paris furriers gave from three to four francs for
100 skins, so that, taking the average at 3_s._ of our money, 16,000
rat-skins would return 24_l._
In London the uses of the dead horse’s flesh, bones, blood, &c., are
different.
Horse-flesh is not--as yet--a portion of human food in this country. In
a recent parliamentary inquiry, witnesses were examined as to whether
horse-flesh was used by the sausage-makers. There was some presumption
that such might be the case, but no direct evidence. I found, however,
among butchers who had the best means of knowing, a strong conviction
that such _was_ the case. One highly-respectable tradesman told me
he was as certain of it as that it was the month of June, though, if
called upon to produce legal evidence proving either that such was the
sausage-makers’ practice, or that this _was_ the month of June, he
might fail in both instances.
I found among street-people who dealt in provisions a strong, or, at
any rate, a strongly-expressed, opinion that the tongues, kidneys, and
hearts of horses were sold as those of oxen. One man told me, somewhat
triumphantly, as a result of his ingenuity in deduction, that he had
thoughts at one time of trying to establish himself in a cats’-meat
walk, and made inquiries into the nature of the calling: “I’m satisfied
the ’osses’ ’arts,” he said, “is sold for beastesses’; ’cause you see,
sir, there’s nothing as ’ud be better liked for favourite cats and pet
dogs, than a nice piece of ’art, but ven do you see the ’osses’ ’arts
on a barrow? If they don’t go to the cats, vere does they go to? Vy, to
the Christians.”
I am assured, however, by tradesmen whose interest (to say nothing of
other considerations) would probably make them glad to expose such
practices, that this substitution of the equine for the bovine heart is
not attempted, and is hardly possible. The bullock’s heart, kidneys,
and tongue, are so different in shape (the heart, more especially), and
in the colour of the fat, while the rough tip of the ox’s tongue is not
found in that of the horse, that this second-hand, or offal kind of
animal food could not be palmed off upon any one who had ever purchased
the heart, kidneys, or tongue of an ox. “If the horse’s tongue be used
as a substitute for that of any other,” said one butcher to me, “it
is for the dried reindeer’s--a savoury dish for the breakfast table!”
Since writing the above, I have had convincing proof given me that the
horses’ tongues are cured and sold as “neats.” The heart and kidneys
are also palmed, I find, for those of oxen!! Thus, in one respect,
there is a material difference between the usages, in respect of this
food, between Paris and London.
One tradesman, in a large way of business--with many injunctions that
I should make no allusion that might lead to his being known, as
he said it might be his ruin, even though he never slaughtered the
meat he sold, but was, in fact, a dead salesman or a vendor of meat
consigned to him--one tradesman, I say, told me that he fancied there
was an _unreasonable_ objection to the eating of horse-flesh among us.
The horse was quite as dainty in his food as the ox, he was quite
as graminivorous, and shrunk more, from a nicer sense of smell, from
anything pertaining to a contact with animal food than did the ox. The
principal objection lies in the number of diseased horses sold at the
knackers. My informant reasoned only from analogy, as he had never
tasted horse-flesh; but a great-uncle of his, he told me, had relished
it highly in the peninsular war.
The uses to which a horse’s carcass are put in London are these:--The
skin, for tanning, sells for 6_s._ as a low average; the hoofs, for
glue, are worth 2_d._; the shoes and nails, 1-1/2_d._; the mane and
tail, 1-1/2_d._; the bones, which in London (as it was described to
me) are “cracked up” for manure, bring 1_s._ 6_d._; the fat is melted
down and used for cart-grease and common harness oil; one person
acquainted with the trade thought that the average yield of fat was 10
lbs. per horse (“taking it low”), another that it was 12 lbs. (“taking
it square”), so that if 11 lbs. be accepted as an average, the fat,
at 2_d._ per lb., would realize 1_s._ 10_d._ Of the tendons no use
is made; of the blood none; and no maggots are reared upon putrid
horse-flesh, but a butcher, who had been twenty years a farmer also,
told me that he knew from experience that there was nothing so good as
maggots for the fattening of poultry, and he thought, from what I told
him of maggot-breeding in Montfaucon, that we were _behind_ the French
in this respect.
Thus the English dead horse--the vendor receiving on an average 1_l._
from the knacker,--realizes the following amount, without including the
knacker’s profit in disposing of the flesh to the cats’-meat man; but
computing it merely at 2_l._ we have the subjoined receipts:--
£ _s._ _d._
The flesh (averaging 2 cwt.,
sold at 2-1/2_d._ per lb.) 2 0 0
The skin 0 6 0
The hoofs 0 0 2
The shoes and nails 0 0 1-1/2
The bones 0 1 6
The fat 0 1 10
The tendons 0 0 0
The tongue, &c. ----------------- ?
The blood 0 0 0
The intestines 0 0 0
-----------------
£2 9 7-1/2
The French dead horse, then, is made a source of nearly 5_s._
higher receipt than the English. On my inquiring the reason of this
difference, and why the blood, &c., were not made available, I was
told that the demand by the Prussian blue manufacturers and the sugar
refiners was so fully supplied, and over-supplied, from the great
cattle slaughter-houses, that the private butchers, for the trifling
sum to be gained, let the blood be wasted. One bullock slaughterer
in Fox and Knot-yard, who kills 180 cattle in a week, receives only
1_l._ for the blood of the whole number, which is received in a well
in the slaughter-house. The amount paid for blood a few years back was
more than double its present rate. Under these circumstances, I was
told, it would be useless trying to turn the wasted offal of a horse
to any profitable purpose. There is, I am told, on an average, 1000
horses slaughtered every week in London, and this, at 2_l._ 10_s._
each animal, would make the value of the dead horses of the metropolis
amount to 130,000_l._ per annum.
Were it not that I might be dwelling too long on the subject, I might
point out how the offal of the skins was made to subserve other
purposes from the Bermondsey tan-yards; and how the parings and
scrapings went to the makers of glue and size, and the hair to the
builders to mix with lime, &c., &c.
I may instance another thing in which the worth of what in many places
is valueless refuse is exemplified, in the matter of “waste,” as
waste paper is always called in the trade. Paper in all its glossiest
freshness is but a reproduction of what had become in some measure
“waste,” viz. the rags of the cotton or linen fabric after serving
their original purpose. There is a body of men in London who occupy
themselves entirely in collecting waste paper. It is no matter of what
kind; a small prayer-book, a once perfumed and welcome love-note,
lawyers’ or tailors’ bills, acts of parliament, and double sheets of
the _Times_, form portions of the waste dealer’s stock. Tons upon tons
are thus consumed yearly. Books of every description are ingredients
of this waste, and in every language; modern poems or pamphlets and
old romances (perfect or imperfect), Shakespeare, Molière, Bibles,
music, histories, stories, magazines, tracts to convert the heathen
or to prove how easily and how immensely our national and individual
wealth might be enhanced, the prospectuses of a thousand companies,
each certain to prove a mine of wealth, schemes to pay off the national
debt, or recommendations to wipe it off, auctioneers’ catalogues and
long-kept letters, children’s copy-books and last century ledgers,
printed effusions which have progressed no further than the unfolded
sheets, uncut works and books mouldy from age--all these things are
found in the insatiate bag of the waste collector, who of late has
been worried because he could not supply enough! “I don’t know how it
is, sir,” said one waste collector, with whom I had some conversation
on the subject of street-sold books, with which business he was also
connected, “I can’t make it out, but paper gets scarcer or else I’m out
of luck. Just at this time my family and me really couldn’t live on my
waste if we had to depend entirely upon it.”
I am assured that in no place in the world is this traffic carried on
to anything approaching the extent that it is in London. When I treat
of the street-buyers I shall have some curious information to publish
on the subject. I do but allude to it here as one strongly illustrative
of “second-hand” appliances.