I have in the preceding remarks specified the wares sold by the vendors
of the second-hand articles of metal manufacture, or (as they are
called in the streets) the “old metal” men. The several articles I
have specified may never be all found at one time upon one stall, but
they are all found on the respective stalls. “Aye, sir,” said one old
man whom I conversed with, “and there’s more things every now and then
comes to the stalls, and there used to be still more when I were young,
but I can’t call them all to mind, for times is worse with me, and so
my memory fails. But there used to be a good many bayonets, and iron
tinder-boxes, and steels for striking lights; I can remember them.”
Some of the sellers have strong heavy barrows, which they wheel from
street to street. As this requires a considerable exertion of strength,
such part of the trade is carried on by strong men, generally of the
costermongering class. The weight to be propelled is about 300 lbs. Of
this class there are now a few, rarely more than half-a-dozen, who sell
on commission in the way I have described concerning the swag-barrowmen.
These are the “old metal swags” of street classification, but their
remuneration is less fixed than that of the other swag-barrowmen. It is
sometimes a quarter, sometimes a third, and sometimes even a half of
the amount taken. The men carrying on this traffic are the servants of
the marine-store dealers, or vendors of old metal articles, who keep
shops. If one of these people be “lumbered up,” that is, if he find
his stock increase too rapidly, he furnishes a barrow, and sends a man
into the streets with it, to sell what the shopkeeper may find to be
excessive. Sometimes if the tradesman can gain only the merest trifle
more than he could gain from the people who buy for the melting-pot, he
is satisfied.
There is, or perhaps was, an opinion prevalent that the street “old
metals” in this way of business got rid of stolen goods in such a
manner as the readiest mode of sale, some of which were purposely
rusted, and sold at almost any price, so that they brought but a profit
to the “fence,” whose payment to the thief was little more than the
price of old metal at the foundry. I understand, however, that this
course is not now pursued, nor is it likely that it ever was pursued to
any extent. The street-seller is directly under the eye of the police,
and when there is a search for stolen goods, it is not very likely that
they would be paraded, however battered or rusted for the purpose,
before men who possessed descriptions of all goods stolen. Until the
establishment of the present system of police, this might have been
an occasional practice. One street-seller had even heard, and he “had
it from the man what did it,” that a last-maker’s shop was some years
back broken into in the expectation that money would be met with, but
none was found; and as the thieves could not bring away such heavy
lumbering things as lasts, they cursed their ill-luck, and brought
away such tools as they could stow about their persons, and cover with
their loose great coats. These were the large knives, fixed to swivels,
and resembling a small scythe, used by the artizan to rough hew the
block of beech-wood; and a variety of excellent rasps and files (for
they must be of the best), necessary for the completion of the last.
These very tools were, in ten days after the robbery, sold from a
street-barrow.
The second-hand metal goods are sold from stalls as well as from
barrows, and these stalls are often tended by women whose husbands may
be in some other branch of street-commerce. One of these stalls I saw
in the care of a stout elderly Jewess, who was fast asleep, nodding
over her locks and keys. She was awakened by the passing policeman,
lest her stock should be pilfered by the boys: “Come, wake up, mother,
and shake yourself,” he said, “I shall catch a weazel asleep next.”
Some of these barrows and stalls are heaped with the goods, and some
are very scantily supplied, but the barrows are by far the best
stocked. Many of them (especially the swag) look like collections of
the different stages of rust, from its incipient spots to its full
possession of the entire metal. But amongst these seemingly useless
things there is a gleam of brass or plated ware. On one barrow I saw an
old brass door-plate, on which was engraven the name of a late learned
judge, Baron B----; another had formerly announced the residence of a
dignitary of the church, the Rev. Mr. ----.
The second-hand metal-sellers are to be seen in all the street-markets,
especially on the Saturday nights; also in Poplar, Limehouse, and the
Commercial-road, in Golden-lane, and in Old-street and Old-street-road,
St. Luke’s, in Hoxton and Shoreditch, in the Westminster Broadway,
and the Whitechapel-road, in Rosemary-lane, and in the district
where perhaps every street calling is pursued, but where some
special street-trades seem peculiar to the genius of the place, in
Petticoat-lane. A person unacquainted with the last-named locality may
have formed an opinion that Petticoat-lane is merely a lane or street.
But Petticoat-lane gives its name to a little district. It embraces
Sandys-row, Artillery-passage, Artillery-lane, Frying-pan-alley,
Catherine Wheel-alley, Tripe-yard, Fisher’s-alley, Wentworth-street,
Harper’s-alley, Marlborough-court, Broad-place, Providence-place,
Ellison-street, Swan-court, Little Love-court, Hutchinson-street,
Little Middlesex-street, Hebrew-place, Boar’s-head-yard,
Black-horse-yard, Middlesex-street, Stoney-lane, Meeting-house-yard,
Gravel-lane, White-street, Cutler-street, and Borer’s-lane, until the
wayfarer emerges into what appears the repose and spaciousness of
Devonshire-square, Bishopsgate-street, up Borer’s-lane, or into what
in the contrast really looks like the aristocratic thoroughfare of the
Aldgate High-street, down Middlesex-street; or into Houndsditch through
the halls of the Old Clothes Exchange.
All these narrow streets, lanes, rows, passages, alleys, yards, courts,
and places, are the sites of the street-trade carried on in this
quarter. The whole neighbourhood rings with street cries, many uttered
in those strange east-end Jewish tones which do not sound like English.
Mixed with the incessant invitations to buy Hebrew dainties, or the
“sheepest pargains,” is occasionally heard the guttural utterance
of the Erse tongue, for the “native Irish,” as they are sometimes
called, are in possession of some portion of the street-traffic of
Petticoat-lane, the original Rag Fair. The savour of the place is
moreover peculiar. There is fresh fish, and dried fish, and fish being
fried in a style peculiar to the Jews; there is the fustiness of old
clothes; there is the odour from the pans on which (still in the Jewish
fashion) frizzle and hiss pieces of meat and onions; puddings are
boiling and enveloped in steam; cakes with strange names are hot from
the oven; tubs of big pickled cucumbers or of onions give a sort of
acidity to the atmosphere; lemons and oranges abound; and altogether
the scene is not only such as can only be seen in London, but only such
as can be seen in this one part of the metropolis.
When I treat of the street-Jews, I shall have information highly
curious to communicate, and when I come to the fifth division of my
present subject, I shall more particularly describe Petticoat-lane, as
the head-quarters of the second-hand clothes business.
I have here alluded to the character of this quarter as being one
much resorted to formerly, and still largely used by the sellers of
second-hand metal goods. Here I was informed that a strong-built man,
known as Jack, or (appropriately enough) as Iron Jack, had, until
his death six or seven years ago, one of the best-stocked barrows in
London. This, in spite of remonstrances, and by a powerful exercise of
his strength, the man lifted, as it were, on to the narrow foot-path,
and every passer-by had his attention directed almost perforce to the
contents of the barrow, for he must make a “_detour_” to advance on
his way. One of this man’s favourite pitches was close to the lofty
walls of what, before the change in their charter, was one of the
East India Company’s vast warehouses. The contrast to any one who
indulged a thought on the subject--and there is great food for thought
in Petticoat-lane--was striking enough. Here towered the store-house
of costly teas, and silks, and spices, and indigo; while at its foot
was carried on the most minute, and apparently worthless of all
street-trades, rusty screws and nails, such as only few would care to
pick up in the street, being objects of earnest bargaining!
An experienced man in the business, who thought he was “turned 50, or
somewhere about that,” gave me the following account of his trade, his
customers, &c.
“I’ve been in most street-trades,” he said, “and was born to it, like,
for my mother was a rag-gatherer--not a bad business once--and I helped
her. I never saw my father, but he was a soldier, and it’s supposed
lost his life in foreign parts. No, I don’t remember ever having heard
what foreign parts, and it don’t matter. Well, perhaps, this is about
as tidy a trade for a bit of bread as any that’s going now. Perhaps
selling fish may be better, but that’s to a man what knows fish well.
I can’t say I ever did. I’m more a dab at cooking it (with a laugh). I
like a bloater best on what’s an Irish gridiron. Do you know what that
is, sir? I know, though I’m not Irish, but I married an Irish wife, and
as good a woman as ever was a wife. It’s done on the tongs, sir, laid
across the fire, and the bloater’s laid across the tongs. Some says
it’s best turned and turned very quick on the coals themselves, but
the tongs is best, for you can raise or lower.” [My informant seemed
interested in his account of this and other modes of cookery, which I
need not detail.] “This is really a very trying trade. O, I mean it
tries a man’s patience so. Why, it was in Easter week a man dressed
like a gentleman--but I don’t think he was a real gentleman--looked
out some bolts, and a hammer head, and other things, odds and ends,
and they came to 10-1/2_d._ He said he’d give 6_d._ ‘Sixpence!’ says
I; ‘why d’ you think I stole ’em?’ ‘Well,’ says he, ‘if I didn’t think
you’d stole ’em, I shouldn’t have come to _you_.’ I don’t think he was
joking. Well, sir, we got to high words, and I said, ‘Then I’m d--d
if you have them for less than 1_s._’ And a bit of a crowd began to
gather, they was most boys, but the p’liceman came up, as slow as you
please, and so my friend flings down 1_s._, and puts the things in his
pocket and marches off, with a few boys to keep him company. That’s the
way one’s temper’s tried. Well, it’s hard to say what sells best. A
latch-lock and keys goes off quick. I’ve had them from 2_d._ to 6_d._;
but it’s only the lower-priced things as sells now in any trade. Bolts
is a fairish stock, and so is all sorts of tools. Well, not saws so
much as such things as screwdrivers, or hammers, or choppers, or tools
that if they’re rusty people can clean up theirselves. Saws ain’t so
easy to manage; bed-keys is good. No, I don’t clean the metal up unless
it’s very bad; I think things don’t sell so well that way. People’s
jealous that they’re just done up on purpose to deceive, though they
may cost only 1_d._ or 2_d._ There’s that cheese-cutter now, it’s
getting rustier and there’ll be very likely a better chance to sell it.
This is how it is, sir, I know. You see if a man’s going to buy old
metal, and he sees it all rough and rusty, he says to himself, ‘Well,
there’s no gammon about it; I can just see what it is.’ Then folks
like to clean up a thing theirselves, and it’s as if it was something
made from their own cleverness. That was just my feeling, sir, when
I bought old metals for my own use, before I was in the trade, and I
goes by that. O, working people’s by far my best customers. Many of
’em’s very fond of jobbing about their rooms or their houses, and they
come to such as me. Then a many has fancies for pigeons, or rabbits,
or poultry, or dogs, and they mostly make up the places for them
theirselves, and as money’s an object, why them sort of fancy people
buys hinges, and locks, and screws, and hammers, and what they want of
me. A clever mechanic can turn his hand to most things that he wants
for his own use. I know a shoemaker that makes beautiful rabbit-hutches
and sells them along with his prize cattle, as I calls his great big
long-eared rabbits. Perhaps I take 2_s._ 6_d._ or 3_s._ a day, and it’s
about half profit. Yes, this time of the year I make good 10_s._ 6_d._
a week, but in winter not 1_s._ a day. That would be very poor pickings
for two people to live on, and I can’t do without my drop of beer, but
my wife has constant work with a first-rate laundress at Mile End, and
so we rub on, for we’ve no family living.”
This informant told me further of the way in which the old metal stocks
sold in the streets were provided; but that branch of the subject
relates to street-buying. Some of the street-sellers, however, buy
their stocks of the shopkeepers.
I find a difficulty in estimating the number of the second-hand
metal-ware street-sellers. Many of the stalls or barrows are the
property of the marine-store shopkeepers, or old metal dealers (marine
stores being about the only things the marine-store men do not sell),
and these are generally placed near the shop, being indeed a portion
of its contents out of doors. Some of the marine-store men (a class of
traders, by the by, not superior to street-sellers, making no “odious”
comparison as to the honesty of the two), when they have purchased
largely--the refuse iron for instance after a house has been pulled
down--establish two or three pitches in the street, confiding the
stalls or barrows to their wives and children. I was told by several
in the trade that there were 200 old metal sellers in the streets, but
from the best information at my command not more than 50 appear to be
strictly _street_-sellers, unconnected with shop-keeping. Estimating
a weekly receipt, per individual, of 15_s._ (half being profit), the
yearly street outlay among this body alone amounts to 1950_l._
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND METAL TRAYS, &c.
There are still some few portions of the old metal trade in the streets
which require specific mention.
Among these is the sale of second-hand trays, occasionally with such
things as bread-baskets. Instead of these wares, however, being matters
of daily traffic, they are offered in the streets only at intervals,
and generally on the Saturday and Monday evenings, while a few are
hawked to public-houses. An Irishman, a rather melancholy looking
man, but possessed of some humour, gave me the following account. His
dress was a worn suit, such as masons work in; but I have seldom seen
so coarse, and never on an Irishman of his class, except on a Sunday,
so clean a shirt, and he made as free a display of it as if it were
the choicest cambric. He washed it, he told me, with his own hands,
as he had neither wife, nor mother, nor sister. “I was a cow-keeper’s
man, your honour,” he said, “and he sent milk to Dublin. I thought I
might do betthur, and I got to Liverpool, and walked here. Have I done
betthur, is it? Sorry a betthur. Would I like to returren to Dublin?
Well, perhaps, plaze God, I’ll do betthur here yit. I’ve sould a power
of different things in the sthreets, but I’m off for counthry work
now. I have a few therrays left if your honour wants such a thing. I
first sould a few for a man I lodged along wid in Kent-street, when
he was sick, and so I got to know the therrade. He tould me to say,
and it’s the therruth, if anybody said, ‘They’re only second-hand,’
that they was all the betthur for that, for if they hadn’t been real
good therrays at first, they would niver have lived to be second-hand
ones. I calls the bigghur therrays butlers, and the smhaller, waithers.
It’s a poor therrade. One woman’ll say, ‘Pooh! ould-fashioned things.’
‘Will, thin, ma’am,’ I’ll say, ‘a good thing like this is niver
ould-fashioned, no more than the bhutiful mate and berrid, and the
bhutiful new praties a coming in, that you’ll be atin off of it, and
thratin’ your husband to, God save him. No lady iver goes to supper
widout her therray.’ Yes, indeed, thin, and it is a poor therrade. It’s
the bhutiful therrays I’ve sould for 6_d._ I buys them of a shop which
dales in sich things. The perrofit! Sorry a perrofit is there in it at
all at all; but I thries to make 4_d._ out of 1_s._ If I makes 6_d._ of
a night it’s good worruk.”
These trays are usually carried under the arm, and are sometimes piled
on a stool or small stand, in a street market. The prices are from
2_d._ to 10_d._, sometimes 1_s._ The stronger descriptions are sold to
street-sellers to display their goods upon, as much as to any other
class. Women and children occasionally sell them, but it is one of the
callings which seems to be disappearing from the streets. From two men,
who were familiar with this and other second-hand trades, I heard the
following reasons assigned for the decadence. One man thought it was
owing to “swag-trays” being got up so common and so cheap, but to look
“stunning well,” at least as long as the shininess lasted. The other
contended that poor working people had enough to do now-a-days to get
something to eat, without thinking of a tray to put it on.
If 20 persons, and that I am told is about the number of sellers, take
in the one or two nights’ sale 4_s._ a week each, on second-hand trays
(33 per cent. being the rate of profit), the street expenditure is
208_l._ in a year.
In other second-hand metal articles there is now and then a separate
trade. Two or three sets of small _fire-irons_ may be offered in a
street-market on a Saturday night; or a small stock of _flat and
Italian irons_ for the laundresses, who work cheap and must buy
second-hand; or a _collection of tools_ in the same way; but these
are accidental sales, and are but ramifications from the general “old
metal” trade that I have described. Perhaps, in the sale of these
second-hand articles, 20 people may be regularly employed, and 300_l._
yearly may be taken.
In Petticoat-lane, Rosemary-lane, Whitecross-street, Ratcliff-highway,
and in the street-markets generally, are to be seen men, women, and
children selling _dinner knives and forks, razors, pocket-knives, and
scissors_. The pocket-knives and scissors are kept well oiled, so that
the weather does not rust them. These goods have been mostly repaired,
ground, and polished for street-commerce. The women and children
selling these articles are the wives and families of the men who
repair, grind, and polish them, and who belong, correctly speaking,
to the class of street-artizans, under which head they will be more
particularly treated of. It is the same also with the street-vendors
of second-hand tin saucepans and other vessels (a trade, by the way,
which is rapidly decreasing), for these are generally made of the old
drums of machines retinned, or are old saucepans and pots mended for
use by the vendors, who are mostly working tinmen, and appertain to the
artizan class.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF SECOND-HAND LINEN, &c.
I now come to the second variety of the several kinds of street-sellers
of second-hand articles. The accounts of the street-trade in
second-hand linens, however, need be but brief; for none of the
callings I have now to notice supply a mode of subsistence to the
street-sellers independently of other pursuits. They are resorted to
whenever an opportunity or a prospect of remuneration presents itself
by the class of general street-sellers, women as well as men--the women
being the most numerous. The sale of these articles is on the Saturday
and Monday nights, in the street-markets, and daily in Petticoat and
Rosemary lanes.
One of the most saleable of all the second-hand textile commodities of
the streets, is an article the demand for which is certainly creditable
to the poorer and the working-classes of London--_towels_. The
principal supply of this street-towelling is obtained from the several
barracks in and near London. They are a portion of what were the
sheets (of strong linen) of the soldiers’ beds, which are periodically
renewed, and the old sheeting is then sold to a contractor, of whom the
street-folk buy it, and wash and prepare it for market. It is sold to
the street-traders at 4_d._ per pound, 1 lb. making eight penny towels;
some (inferior) is as low as 2_d._ The principal demand is by the
working-classes.
“Why, for one time, sir,” said a street-seller to me, “there wasn’t
much towelling in the streets, and I got a tidy lot, just when I
knew it would go off, like a thief round a corner. I pitched in
Whitecross-street, and not far from a woman that was making a great
noise, and had a good lot of people about her, for cheap mackarel
weren’t so very plenty then as they are now. ‘Here’s your cheap
mack’rel,’ shouts she, ‘cheap, cheap, cheap mac-mac-mac-_mack_’rel.
Then _I_ begins: ‘Here’s your cheap towelling; cheap, cheap, cheap,
tow-tow-tow-_tow_-ellings. Here’s towels a penny a piece, and two for
twopence, or a double family towel for twopence.’ I soon had a greater
crowd than she had. O, yes! I gives ’em a good history of what I has
to sell; patters, as you call it; a man that can’t isn’t fit for the
streets. ‘Here’s what every wife should buy for her husband, and every
husband for his wife,’ I goes on. ‘Domestic happiness is then secured.
If a husband licks his wife, or a wife licks her husband, a towel is
the handiest and most innocent thing it can be done with, and if it’s
wet it gives you a strong clipper on the cheek, as every respectable
married person knows as well as I do. A clipper that way always does me
good, and I’m satisfied it does more good to a gentleman than a lady.’
Always patter for the women, sir, if you wants to sell. Yes, towels is
good sale in London, but I prefer country business. I’m three times
as much in the country as in town, and I’m just off to Ascot to sell
cards, and do a little singing, and then I’ll perhaps take a round to
Bath and Bristol, but Bath’s not what it was once.”
Another street-seller told me that, as far as his experience went,
Monday night was a better time for the sale of second-hand sheetings,
&c., than Saturday, as on Monday the wives of the working-classes who
sought to buy cheaply what was needed for household use, usually went
out to make their purchases. The Saturday-night’s mart is more one for
immediate necessities, either for the Sunday’s dinner or the Sunday’s
wear. It appears to me that in all these little distinctions--of
which street-folk tell you, quite unconscious that they tell anything
new--there is something of the history of the character of a people.
“Wrappers,” or “bale-stuff,” as it is sometimes styled, are also sold
in the streets as second-hand goods. These are what have formed the
covers of the packages of manufactures, and are bought (most frequently
by the Jews) at the wholesale warehouses or the larger retail shops,
and re-sold to the street-people, usually at 1-1/2_d._ and 2_d._ per
pound. These goods are sometimes sold entire, but are far more often
cut into suitable sizes for towels, strong aprons, &c. They soon get
“bleached,” I was told, by washing and wear.
_“Burnt” linen or calico_ is also sold in the streets as a second-hand
article. On the occasion of a fire at any tradesman’s, whose stock of
drapery had been injured, the damaged wares are bought by the Jewish or
other keepers of the haberdashery swag-shops. Some of these are sold
by the second-hand street dealers, but the traffic for such articles
is greater among the hawkers. Of this I have already given an account.
The street-sale of these burnt (and sometimes _designedly_ burnt) wares
is in pieces, generally from 6_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ each, or in yards,
frequently at 6_d._ per yard, but of course the price varies with the
quality.
I believe that no _second-hand sheets_ are sold in the streets as
sheets, for when tolerably good they are received at the pawn-shops,
and if indifferent, at the dolly-shops, or illegal pawn-shops. Street
folk have told me of sheets being sold in the street-markets, but so
rarely as merely to supply an exception. In Petticoat-lane, indeed,
they are sold, but it is mostly by the Jew shopkeepers, who also expose
their goods in the streets, and they are sold by them very often to
street-traders, who convert them into other purposes.
The statistics of this trade present great difficulties. The
second-hand linen, &c., is not a regular street traffic. It may be
offered to the public 20 days or nights in a month, or not one. If a
“job-lot” have been secured, the second-hand street-seller may confine
himself to that especial stock. If his means compel him to offer only
a paucity of second-hand goods, he may sell but one kind. Generally,
however, the same man or woman trades in two, three, or more of the
second-hand textile productions which I have specified, and it is
hardly one street-seller out of 20, who if he have cleared his 10_s._
in a given time, by vending different articles, can tell the relative
amount he cleared on each. The trade is, therefore, irregular, and is
but a consequence, or--as one street-seller very well expressed it--a
“tail” of other trades. For instance, if there has been a great auction
of any corn-merchant’s effects, there will be more sacking than usual
in the street-markets; if there have been sales, beyond the average
extent, of old household furniture, there will be a more ample street
stock of curtains, carpeting, fringes, &c. Of the articles I have
enumerated the sale of second-hand linen, more especially that from the
barrack-stores, is the largest of any.
The most intelligent man whom I met with in this trade calculated that
there were 80 of these second-hand street-folk plying their trade two
nights in the week; that they took 8_s._ each weekly, about half of it
being profit; thus the street expenditure would be 1664_l._ per annum.