I have in a former page specified some of the goods which make up the
sum of the second-hand miscellaneous commerce of the streets of London.
I may premise that the trader of this class is a sort of street broker;
and it is no more possible minutely to detail his especial traffic
in the several articles of his stock, than it would be to give a
specific account of each and several of the “sundries” to be found in
the closets or corners of an old-furniture broker’s or marine-store
seller’s premises, in describing his general business.
The members of this trade (as will be shown in the subsequent
statements) are also “miscellaneous” in their character. A few have
known liberal educations, and have been established in liberal
professions; others have been artisans or shopkeepers, but the mass are
of the general class of street-sellers.
I will first treat of the _Second-Hand Street-Sellers of Articles for
Amusement_, giving a wide interpretation to the word “amusement.”
The backgammon, chess, draught, and cribbage-boards of the second-hand
trade have originally been of good quality--some indeed of a very
superior manufacture; otherwise the “cheap Germans” (as I heard
the low-priced foreign goods from the swag-shops called) would by
their superior cheapness have rendered the business a nullity. The
backgammon-boards are bought of brokers, when they are often in a worn,
unhinged, and what may be called ragged condition. The street-seller
“trims them up,” but in this there is nothing of artisanship, although
it requires some little taste and some dexterity of finger. A new hinge
or two, or old hinges re-screwed, and a little pasting of leather and
sometimes the application of strips of bookbinder’s gold, is all that
is required. The backgammon-boards are sometimes offered in the streets
by an itinerant; sometimes (and more frequently than otherwise in a
deplorable state, the points of the table being hardly distinguishable)
they are part of the furniture of a second-hand stall. I have seen one
at an old book-stall, but most usually they are vended by being hawked
to the better sort of public-houses, and there they are more frequently
disposed of by raffle than by sale. It is not once in a thousand times,
I am informed, that second-hand “men” are sold with the board. Before
the board has gone through its series of hands to the street-seller,
the men have been lost or scattered. New men are sometimes sold or
raffled with the backgammon-boards (as with the draught) at from 6_d._
to 2_s._ 6_d._ the set, the best being of box-wood.
Chess-boards and men--for without the men of course a draught, or
the top of a backgammon-board suffices for chess--are a commodity now
rarely at the disposal of the street-sellers; and, as these means
of a leisurely and abstruse amusement are not of a ready sale, the
second-hand dealers do not “look out” for them, but merely speculate
in them when the article “falls in their way” and seems a palpable
bargain. Occasionally, a second-hand chess apparatus is still sold
by the street-folk. One man--upon whose veracity I have every reason
to rely--told me that he once sold a beautiful set of ivory men and
a handsome “leather board” (second-hand) to a gentleman who accosted
him as he saw him carry them along the street for sale, inviting him
to step in doors, when the gentleman’s residence was reached. The
chess-men were then arranged and examined, and the seller asked 3_l._
3_s._ for them, at once closing with the offer of 3_l._; “for I found,
sir,” he said, “I had a gentleman to do with, for he told me he thought
they were really cheap at 3_l._, and he would give me that.” Another
dealer in second-hand articles, when I asked him if he had ever sold
chess-boards and men, replied, “Only twice, sir, and then at 4_s._ and
5_s._ the set; they was poor. I’ve seen chess played, and I should say
it’s a rum game; but I know nothing about it. I once had a old gent for
a customer, and he was as nice and quiet a old gent as could be, and
I always called on him when I thought I had a curus old tea-caddy, or
knife-box, or anything that way. He didn’t buy once in twenty calls,
but he always gave me something for my trouble. He used to play at
chess with another old gent, and if, after his servant had told him I’d
come, I waited ’til I could wait no longer, and then knocked at his
room door, he swore like a trooper.”
Draught-boards are sold at from 3_d._ to 1_s._ second-hand.
Cribbage-boards, also second-hand, and sometimes with cards, are only
sold, I am informed, when they are very bad, at from 1_d._ to 3_d._,
or very good, at from 2_s._ 6_d._ to 5_s._ One street-seller told me
that he once sold a “Chinee” cribbage-board for 18_s._, which cost
him 10_s._ “It was a most beautiful thing,” he stated, “and was very
high-worked, and was inlaid with ivory, and with green ivory too.”
The Dice required for the playing of backgammon, or for any purpose,
are bought of the waiters at the club-houses, generally at 2_l._ the
dozen sets. They are retailed at about 25 per cent. profit. Dice in
this way are readily disposed of by the street-people, as they are
looked upon as “true,” and are only about a sixth of the price they
could be obtained for new ones in the duly-stamped covers. A few dice
are sold at 6_d._ to 1_s._ the set, but they are old and battered.
There are but two men who support themselves wholly by the street-sale
and the hawking of the different boards, &c., I have described. There
are two, three, or sometimes four occasional participants in the
trade. Of these one held a commission in Her Majesty’s service, but
was ruined by gaming, and when unable to live by any other means, he
sells the implements with which he had been but too familiar. “He lost
everything in Jermyn-street,” a man who was sometimes his comrade in
the sale of these articles said to me, “but he is a very gentlemanly
and respectable man.”
The profits in this trade are very uncertain. A man who was engaged
in it told me that one week he had cleared 2_l._, and the next, with
greater pains-taking, did not sell a single thing.
The other articles which are a portion of the second-hand miscellaneous
trade of this nature are sold as often, or more often, at stalls than
elsewhere. Dominoes, for instance, may be seen in the winter, and they
are offered only in the winter, on perhaps 20 stalls. They are sold at
from 4_d._ a set, and I heard of one superior set which were described
to me as “brass-pinned,” being sold in a handsome box for 5_s._,
the shop price having been 15_s._ The great sale of dominoes is at
Christmas.
Pope-Joan boards, which, I was told, were fifteen years ago sold
readily in the streets, and were examined closely by the purchasers
(who were mostly the wives of tradesmen), to see that the print
or paint announcing the partitions for “intrigue,” “matrimony,”
“friendship,” “Pope,” &c., were perfect, are now never, or rarely,
seen. Formerly the price was 1_s._ to 1_s._ 9_d._ In the present year I
could hear of but one man who had even offered a Pope-board for sale in
the street, and he sold it, though almost new, for 3_d._
“Fish,” or the bone, ivory, or mother-o’-pearl card counters in the
shape of fish, or sometimes in a circular form, used to be sold
second-hand as freely as the Pope-boards, and are now as rarely to be
seen.
Until about 20 years ago, as well as I can fix upon a term from the
information I received, the apparatus for a game known as the “Devil
among the tailors” was a portion of the miscellaneous second-hand
trade or hawking of the streets. In it a top was set spinning on
a long board, and the result depended upon the number of men, or
“tailors,” knocked down by the “devil” (top) of each player, these
tailors being stationed, numbered, and scored (when knocked down) in
the same way as when the balls are propelled into the numbered sockets
in a bagatelle-board. I am moreover told that in the same second-hand
calling were boards known as “solitaire-boards.” These were round
boards, with a certain number of holes, in each of which was a peg. One
peg was removed at the selection of the player, and the game consisted
in taking each remaining peg, by advancing another over its head into
any vacant hole, and if at the end of the game only one peg remained
in the board, the player won; if winning it could be called when
the game could only be played by one person, and was for “solitary”
amusement. Chinese puzzles, sometimes on a large scale, were then also
a part of the second-hand traffic of the streets. These are a series
of thin woods in geometrical shapes, which may be fitted into certain
forms or patterns contained in a book, or on a sheet. These puzzles
are sold in the streets still, but in smaller quantity and diminished
size. Different games played with the teetotum were also a part of
second-hand street-sale, but none of these bygone pastimes were vended
to any extent.
From the best data I have been able to obtain it appears that the
amount received by the street-sellers or street-hawkers in the sale of
these second-hand articles of amusement is 10_l._ weekly, about half
being profit, divided in the proportions I have intimated, as respects
the number of street-sellers and the periods of sale; or 520_l._
expended yearly.
I should have stated that the principal customers of this branch
of second-hand traders are found in the public-houses and at the
cigar-shops, where the goods are carried by street-sellers, who hawk
from place to place.
These dealers also attend the neighbouring, and, frequently in the
summer, the more distant races, where for dice and the better quality
of their “boards,” &c., they generally find a prompt market. The sale
at the fairs consists only of the lowest-priced goods, and in a very
scant proportion compared to the races.