These sellers are another class who are fast disappearing from the
streets of London. Before glass and crockery, but more especially
glass, became so low-priced when new, the second-hand glass-man was
one of the most prosperous of the open-air traders; he is now so much
the reverse that he must generally mix up some other calling with
his original business. One man, whose address was given to me as an
experienced glass-man, I found selling mackarel and “pound crabs,”
and complaining bitterly that mackarel were high, and that he could
make nothing out of them that week at 2_d._ each, for poor persons, he
told me, would not give more. “Yes, sir,” he said, “I’ve been in most
trades, besides having been a pot-boy, both boy and man, and I don’t
like this fish-trade at all. I could get a pot-boy’s place again, but
I’m not so strong as I were, and it’s slavish work in the place I could
get; and a man that’s not so young as he was once is chaffed so by the
young lads and fellows in the tap-room and the skittle-ground. For this
last three year or more I had to do something in addition to my glass
for a crust. Before I dropped it as a bad consarn, I sold old shoes as
well as old glass, and made both ends meet that way, a leather end and
a glass end. I sold off my glass to a rag and bottle shop for 9_s._,
far less than it were worth, and I swopped my shoes for my fish-stall,
and water-tub, and 3_s._ in money. I’ll be out of this trade before
long. The glass was good once; I’ve made my 15_s._ and 20_s._ a week
at it: I don’t know how long that is ago, but it’s a good long time.
Latterly I could do no business at all in it, or hardly any. The old
shoes was middling, because they’re a free-selling thing, but somehow
it seems awkward mixing up any other trade with your glass.”
The stall or barrow of a “second-hand glass-man” presented, and still,
in a smaller degree, presents, a variety of articles, and a variety
of colours, but over the whole prevails that haziness which seems to
be considered proper to this trade. Even in the largest rag and bottle
shops, the second-hand bottles always look dingy. “It wouldn’t pay to
wash them all,” said one shopkeeper to me, “so we washes none; indeed,
I b’lieve people would rather buy them as they is, and clean them
themselves.”
The street-assortment of second-hand glass may be described as one of
“odds and ends”--odd goblets, odd wine-glasses, odd decanters, odd
cruet-bottles, salt-cellars, and mustard-pots; together with a variety
of “tops” to fit mustard-pots or butter-glasses, and of “stoppers” to
fit any sized bottle, the latter articles being generally the most
profitable. Occasionally may still be seen a blue spirit-decanter,
one of a set of three, with “brandy,” in faded gold letters, upon it,
or a brass or plated label, as dingy as the bottle, hung by a fine
wire-chain round the neck. Blue finger-glasses sold very well for use
as sugar-basins to the wives of the better-off working-people or small
tradesmen. One man, apparently about 40, who had been in this trade
in his youth, and whom I questioned as to what was the quality of his
stock, told me of the demand for “blue sugars,” and pointed out to me
one which happened to be on a stand by the door of a rag and bottle
shop. When I mentioned its original use, he asked further about it,
and after my answers seemed sceptical on the subject. “People that’s
quality,” he said, “that’s my notion on it, that hasn’t neither to yarn
their dinner, nor to cook it, but just open their mouths and eat it,
can’t dirty their hands so at dinner as to have glasses to wash ’em in
arterards. But there’s queer ways everywhere.”
At one time what were called “doctors’ bottles” formed a portion of
the second-hand stock I am describing. These were phials bought by
the poorer people, in which to obtain some physician’s gratuitous
prescription from the chemist’s shop, or the time-honoured nostrum of
some wonderful old woman. For a very long period, it must be borne in
mind, all kinds of glass wares were dear. Small glass frames, to cover
flower-roots, were also sold at these stalls, as were fragments of
looking-glass. Beneath his stall or barrow, the “old glass-man” often
had a few old wine or beer-bottles for sale.
At the period before cast-glass was so common, and, indeed,
subsequently, until glass became cheap, it was not unusual to see at
the second-hand stalls, rich cut-glass vessels which had been broken
and cemented, for sale at a low figure, the glass-man being often a
mender. It was the same with China punch-bowls, and the costlier kind
of dishes, but this part of the trade is now unknown.
There is one curious sort of ornament still to be met with at these
stalls--wide-mouthed bottles, embellished with coloured patterns of
flowers, birds, &c., generally cut from “furniture prints,” and kept
close against the sides of the interior by the salt with which the
bottles are filled. A few second-hand pitchers, teapots, &c., are still
sold at from 1_d._ to 6_d._
There are now not above six men (of the ordinary street-selling
class) who carry on this trade regularly. Sometimes twelve stalls or
barrows may be seen; sometimes one, and sometimes none. Calculating
that each of the six dealers takes 12_s._ weekly, with a profit of
6_s._ or 7_s._, we find 187_l._ 4_s._ expended in this department of
street-commerce. The principal place for the trade is in High-street,
Whitechapel.