The multifariousness of the articles of this trade is limited only by
what the uncertainty of the climate, the caprices of fashion, or the
established styles of apparel in the kingdom, have caused to be worn,
flung aside, and reworn as a revival of an obsolete style. It is to
be remarked, however, that of the old-fashioned styles none that are
costly have been revived. Laced coats, and embroidered and lappeted
waistcoats, have long disappeared from second-hand traffic--the last
stage of fashions--and indeed from all places but court or fancy balls
and the theatre.
The great mart for second-hand apparel was, in the last century,
in Monmouth-street; now, by one of those arbitrary, and almost
always inappropriate, changes in the nomenclature of streets, termed
Dudley-street, Seven Dials. “Monmouth-street finery” was a common term
to express tawdriness and pretence. Now Monmouth-street, for its new
name is hardly legitimated, has no finery. Its second-hand wares are
almost wholly confined to old boots and shoes, which are vamped up with
a good deal of trickery; so much so that a shoemaker, himself in the
poorer practice of the “gentle craft,” told me that blacking and brown
paper were the materials of Monmouth-street cobbling. Almost every
master in Monmouth-street now is, I am told, an Irishman; and the great
majority of the workmen are Irishmen also. There were a few Jews and a
few cockneys in this well-known street a year or two back, but now this
branch of the second-hand trade is really in the hands of what may be
called a clan. A little business is carried on in second-hand apparel,
as well as boots and shoes, but it is insignificant.
The head-quarters of this second-hand trade are now in Petticoat and
Rosemary lanes, especially in Petticoat-lane, and the traffic there
carried on may be called enormous. As in other departments of commerce,
both in our own capital, in many of our older cities, and in the cities
of the Continent, the locality appropriated to this traffic is one of
narrow streets, dark alleys, and most oppressive crowding. The traders
seem to judge of a Rag-fair garment, whether a cotton frock or a ducal
coachman’s great-coat, by the touch, more reliably than by the sight;
they inspect, so to speak, with their fingers more than their eyes.
But the business in Petticoat and Rosemary lanes is mostly of a retail
character. The wholesale mart--for the trade in old clothes has both a
wholesale and retail form--is in a place of especial curiosity, and one
of which, as being little known, I shall first speak.