The other second-hand articles sold in the streets I will give under
one head, specifying the different characteristics of the trade, when
any striking peculiarities exist. To give a detail of the whole trade,
or rather of the several kinds of articles in the whole trade, is
impossible. I shall therefore select only such as are sold the more
extensively, or present any novel or curious features of second-hand
street-commerce.
_Writing-desks_, _tea-caddies_, _dressing-cases_, and _knife-boxes_
used to be a ready sale, I was informed, when “good second-hand;” but
they are “got up” now so cheaply by the poor fancy cabinet-makers
who work for the “slaughterers,” or furniture warehouses, and for
some of the general-dealing swag-shops, that the sale of anything
second-hand is greatly diminished. In fact I was told that as regards
second-hand writing-desks and dressing-cases, it might be said there
was “no trade at all now.” A few, however, are still to be seen at
miscellaneous stalls, and are occasionally, but very rarely, offered
at a public-house “used” by artisans who may be considered “judges” of
work. The tea-caddies are the things which are in best demand. “Working
people buy them,” I was informed, and “working people’s wives. When
women are the customers they look closely at the lock and key, as they
keep ‘my uncle’s cards’ there” (pawnbroker’s duplicates).
One man had lately sold second-hand tea-caddies at 9_d._, 1_s._, and
1_s._ 3_d._ each, and cleared 2_s._ in a day when he had stock and
devoted his time to this sale. He could not persevere in it if he
wished, he told me, as he might lose a day in looking out for the
caddies; he might go to fifty brokers and not find one caddy cheap
enough for his purpose.
_Brushes_ are sold second-hand in considerable quantities in the
streets, and are usually vended at stalls. Shoe-brushes are in the
best demand, and are generally sold, when in good condition, at 1_s._
the set, the cost to the street-seller being 8_d._ They are bought, I
was told, by the people who clean their own shoes, or have to clean
other people’s. Clothes’ brushes are not sold to any extent, as the
“hard brush” of the shoe set is used by working people for a clothes’
brush. Of late, I am told, second-hand brushes have sold more freely
than ever. They were hardly to be had just when wanted, in a sufficient
quantity, for the demand by persons going to Epsom and Ascot races, who
carry a brush of little value with them, to brush the dust gathered
on the road from their coats. The coster-girls buy very hard brushes,
indeed mere stumps, with which they brush radishes; these brushes are
vended at the street-stalls at 1_d._ each.
In _Stuffed Birds_ for the embellishment of the walls of a room, there
is still a small second-hand street sale, but none now in images or
chimney-piece ornaments. “Why,” said one dealer, “I can now buy new
figures for 9_d._, such as not many years ago cost 7_s._, so what
chance of a second-hand sale is there?” The stuffed birds which sell
the best are starlings. They are all sold as second-hand, but are often
“made up” for street-traffic; an old bird or two, I was told, in a new
case, or a new bird in an old case. Last Saturday evening one man told
me he had sold two “long cases” of starlings and small birds for 2_s._
6_d._ each. There are no stuffed parrots or foreign birds in this sale,
and no pheasants or other game, except sometimes wretched old things
which are sold because they happen to be in a case.
The street-trade in second-hand _Lasts_ is confined principally
to Petticoat and Rosemary lanes, where they are bought by the
“garret-masters” in the shoemaking trade who supply the large wholesale
warehouses; that is to say, by small masters who find their own
materials and sell the boots and shoes by the dozen pairs. The lasts
are bought also by mechanics, street-sellers, and other poor persons
who cobble their own shoes. A shoemaker told me that he occasionally
bought a last at a street stall, or rather from street hampers in
Petticoat and Rosemary lanes, and it seemed to him that second-hand
stores of street lasts got neither bigger nor smaller: “I suppose
it’s this way,” he reasoned; “the garret-master buys lasts to do the
slop-snobbing cheap, mostly women’s lasts, and he dies or is done up
and goes to the “great house,” and his lasts find their way back to
the streets. You notice, sir, the first time you’re in Rosemary-lane,
how little a great many of the lasts have been used, and that shows
what a terrible necessity there was to part with them. In some there’s
hardly any peg-marks at all.” The lasts are sold from 1_d._ to 3_d._
each, or twice that amount in pairs, “rights and lefts,” according to
the size and the condition. There are about 20 street last-sellers in
the second-hand trade of London--“at least 20,” one man said, after he
seemed to have been making a mental calculation on the subject.
_Second-hand harness_ is sold largely, and when good is sold very
readily. There is, I am told, far less slop-work in harness-making than
in shoemaking or in the other trades, such as tailoring, and “many
a lady’s pony harness,” it was said to me by a second-hand dealer,
“goes next to a tradesman, and next to a costermonger’s donkey, and if
it’s been good leather to begin with--as it will if it was made for a
lady--why the traces’ll stand clouting, and patching, and piecing, and
mending for a long time, and they’ll do to cobble old boots last of
all, for old leather’ll wear just in treading, when it might snap at a
pull. Give me a good quality to begin with, sir, and it’s serviceable
to the end.” In my inquiries among the costermongers I ascertained
that if one of that body started his donkey, or rose from that to his
pony, he never bought new harness, unless it were a new collar if he
had a regard for the comfort of his beast, but bought old harness, and
“did it up” himself, often using iron rivets, or clenched nails, to
reunite the broken parts, where, of course, a harness-maker would apply
a patch. Nor is it the costermongers alone who buy all their harness
second-hand. The sweep, whose stock of soot is large enough to require
the help of an ass and a cart in its transport; the collector of bones
and offal from the butchers’ slaughter-houses or shops; and the many
who may be considered as co-traders with the costermonger class--the
greengrocer, the street coal-seller by retail, the salt-sellers, the
gravel and sand dealer (a few have small carts)--all, indeed, of
that class of traders, buy their harness second-hand, and generally
in the streets. The chief sale of second-hand harness is on the
Friday afternoons, in Smithfield. The more especial street-sale is in
Petticoat and Rosemary lanes, and in the many off-streets and alleys
which may be called the tributaries to those great second-hand marts.
There is no sale of these wares in the Saturday night markets, for
in the crush and bustle generally prevailing there at such times,
no room could be found for things requiring so much space as sets
of second-hand harness, and no time sufficiently to examine them.
“There’s so much to look at, you understand, sir,” said one second-hand
street-trader, who did a little in harness as well as in barrows, “if
you wants a decent set, and don’t grudge a shilling or two--and I never
grudges them myself when I has ’em--so that it takes a little time. You
must see that the buckles has good tongues--and it’s a sort of joke in
the trade that a bad tongue’s a d----d bad thing--and that the pannel
of the pad ain’t as hard as a board (flocks is the best stuffing, sir),
and that the bit, if it’s rusty, can be polished up, for a animal no
more likes a rusty bit in his mouth than we likes a musty bit of bread
in our’n. O, a man as treats his ass as a ass ought to be treated--and
it’s just the same if he has a pony--can’t be too perticler. If I
had my way I’d ’act a law making people perticler about ’osses’ and
asses’ shoes. If your boot pinches you, sir, you can sing out to your
bootmaker, but a ass can’t blow up a farrier.” It seems to me that in
these homely remarks of my informant, there is, so to speak, a sound
practical kindliness. There can be little doubt that a fellow who
maltreats his ass or his dog, maltreats his wife and children when he
dares.
_Clocks_ are sold second-hand, but only by three or four foreigners,
Dutchmen or Germans, who hawk them and sell them at 2_s._ 6_d._ or
3_s._ each, Dutch clocks only being disposed of in this way. These
traders, therefore, come under the head of STREET-FOREIGNERS. “Ay,” one
street-seller remarked to me, “it’s only Dutch now as is second-handed
in the streets, but it’ll soon be Americans. The swags is some of them
hung up with Slick’s;” [so he called the American clocks, meaning the
“Sam _Slicks_,” in reference to Mr. Justice Hallyburton’s work of that
title;] “they’re hung up with ’em, sir, and no relation whatsomever
(pawnbroker) ’ll give a printed character of ’em (a duplicate), and
so they must come to the streets, and jolly cheap they’ll be.” The
foreigners who sell the second-hand Dutch clocks sell also new clocks
of the same manufacture, and often on tally, 1_s._ a week being the
usual payment.
_Cartouche-boxes_ are sold at the miscellaneous stalls, but only after
there has been what I heard called a “Tower sale” (sale of military
stores). When bought of the street-sellers, the use of these boxes is
far more peaceful than that for which they were manufactured. Instead
of the receptacles of cartridges, the divisions are converted into nail
boxes, each with its different assortment, or contain the smaller kinds
of tools, such as awl-blades. These boxes are sold in the streets at
1/2_d._ or 1_d._ each, and are bought by jobbing shoemakers more than
by any other class.
Of the other second-hand commodities of the streets, I may observe
that in _Trinkets_ the trade is altogether Jewish; in _Maps_, with
frames, it is now a nonentity, and so it is with _Fishing-rods_,
_Cricket-bats_, _&c._
In _Umbrellas_ and _Parasols_ the second-hand traffic is large, but
those vended in the streets are nearly all “done up” for street-sale by
the class known as “Mush,” or more properly “Mushroom Fakers,” that is
to say, the makers or _fakers_ (_facere_--the slang _fakement_ being
simply a corruption of the Latin _facimentum_) of those articles which
are similar in shape to _mushrooms_. I shall treat of this class and
the goods they sell under the head of Street-Artisans. The collectors
of Old Umbrellas and Parasols are the same persons as collect the
second-hand habiliments of male and female attire.
* * * * *
The men and women engaged in the street-commerce carried on in
second-hand articles are, in all respects, a more mixed class than the
generality of street-sellers. Some hawk in the streets goods which they
also display in their shops, or in the windowless apartments known
as their shops. Some are not in possession of shops, but often buy
their wares of those who are. Some collect or purchase the articles
they vend; others collect them by barter. The itinerant crock-man, the
root-seller, the glazed table-cover seller, the hawker of spars and
worked stone, and even the costermonger of the morning, is the dealer
in second-hand articles of the afternoon and evening. The costermonger
is, moreover, often the buyer and seller of second-hand harness in
Smithfield. I may point out again, also, what a multifariousness of
wares passes in the course of a month through the hands of a general
street-seller; at one time new goods, at another second-hand; sometimes
he is stationary at a pitch vending “lots,” or “swag toys;” at others
itinerant, selling braces, belts, and hose.
I found no miscellaneous dealer who could tell me of the proportionate
receipts from the various articles he dealt in even for the last
month. He “did well” in this, and badly in the other trade, but beyond
such vague statements there is no precise information to be had. It
should be recollected that the street-sellers do not keep accounts, or
those documents would supply references. “It’s all headwork with us,” a
street-seller said, somewhat boastingly, to me, as if the ignorance of
book-keeping was rather commendable.