Until a few years after the repeal of the duty on the salt, there were
no street-sellers of it. It was first taxed in the time of William
III., and during the war with Napoleon the impost was 15_s._ the
bushel, or nearly thirty times the cost of the article taxed. The duty
was finally repealed in 1823. When the tax was at the highest, salt
was smuggled most extensively, and retailed at 4_d._ and 4-1/2_d._ the
pound. A licence to sell it was also necessary. Street salt-selling is
therefore a trade of some twenty years standing. Considering the vast
consumption of salt, and the trifling amount of capital necessary to
start in the business, it might be expected that the street-sellers
would be a numerous class, but they do not number above 150 at the
outside. The reason assigned by a well-informed man was, that in every
part of London there are such vast numbers of shopkeepers who deal in
salt.
About one-half of those employed in
street salt-selling have donkeys and
carts, and the rest use the two-wheeled
barrow of the costermonger, to which
class the street salt-sellers, generally,
belong. The value of the
donkey and cart may be about 2_l._ 5_s._
on an average, so that 75 of the
number possessing donkeys and carts
will have a capital among them equal
to the sum of £168 15 0
The barrows of the remainder are
worth about 10_s._ each, which will
amount to 37 10 0
To sell 3 cwt. of salt in a day is considered
good work; and this, if purchased
at 2_s._ per cwt., gives for stock-money
the sum total of 45 0 0
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Thus the amount of capital which
may be reasonably assumed to be
embarked in this business is £251 5 0
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The street-sellers pay at the rate of 2_s._ per cwt. for the salt, and
retail it at 3 lbs. for 1_d._, which leaves 1_s._ 1_d._ profit on every
cwt. One day with another, taking wet and dry, for from the nature of
the article it cannot be hawked in wet weather, the street-sellers
dispose of about 2-1/2 cwt. per day, or 18 tons 15 cwt. per day for all
hands, which, deducting Sundays, makes 5825 tons in the course of the
year. The profit of 1_s._ 1_d._ per cwt. amounts to a yearly aggregate
profit of 6310_l._ 8_s._ 4_d._, or about 42_l._ per annum for each
person in the trade.
The salt dealers, generally, endeavour to increase their profits by the
sale of mustard, and sometimes by the sale of rock-salt, which is used
for horses; but in these things they do little, the most profit they
can realize in a day averaging about 4_d._
The salt men who merely use the barrow are much better off than the
donkey-cart men; the former are young men, active and strong, well
able to drive their truck or barrow about from one place to another,
and they can thereby save the original price and subsequent keep of
the donkey. The latter are in general old men, broken down and weak,
or lads. The daily cost of keeping a donkey is from 6_d._ to 9_d._; if
we reckon 7-1/2_d._ as the average, it will annually amount to 11_l._
8_s._ 1_d._ the year, which will reduce the profit of 42_l._ to about
30_l._, and so leave a balance of 11_l._ 8_s._ 1_d._ in favour of the
truck or barrow man.
There are nine or ten places where the street-sellers purchase the
salt:--Moore’s, at Paddington, who get their salt by the canal, from
Staffordshire; Welling’s, at Battle-bridge; Baillie, of Thames-street,
&c. Great quantities are brought to London by the different railways.
The street-sellers have all regular beats, and seldom intrude on each
other, though it sometimes happens, especially when any quarrel occurs
among them, that they oppose and undersell one another in order to
secure the customers.
During my inquiries on this subject, I visited Church-lane, Bloomsbury,
to see a street-seller, about seven in the evening. Since the
alterations in St. Giles’s, Church-lane has become one of the most
crowded places in London. The houses, none of which are high, are all
old, time-blackened, and dilapidated, with shattered window-frames
and broken panes. Stretching across the narrow street, from all the
upper windows, might be seen lines crossing and recrossing each other,
on which hung yellow-looking shirts, stockings, women’s caps, and
handkerchiefs looking like soiled and torn paper, and throwing the
whole lane into shade. Beneath this ragged canopy, the street literally
swarmed with human beings--young and old, men and women, boys and
girls, wandering about amidst all kinds of discordant sounds. The
footpaths on both sides of the narrow street were occupied here and
there by groups of men and boys, some sitting on the flags and others
leaning against the wall, while their feet, in most instances bare,
dabbled in the black channel alongside the kerb, which being disturbed
sent up a sickening stench. Some of these groups were playing cards for
money, which lay on the ground near them. Men and women at intervals
lay stretched out in sleep on the pathway; over these the passengers
were obliged to jump; in some instances they stood on their backs as
they stepped over them, and then the sleeper languidly raised his head,
growled out a drowsy oath, and slept again. Three or four women, with
bloated countenances, blood-shot eyes, and the veins of their necks
swollen and distended till they resembled strong cords, staggered about
violently quarrelling at the top of their drunken voices.
The street salt-seller--whom I had great difficulty in finding in such
a place--was a man of about 50, rather sickly in his look. He wore an
old cloth cap without a peak, a sort of dun-coloured waistcoat, patched
and cobbled, a strong check shirt, not remarkable for its cleanliness,
and what seemed to me to be an old pair of buckskin breeches, with
fragments hanging loose about them like fringes. To the covering of
his feet--I can hardly say shoes--there seemed to be neither soles nor
uppers. How they kept on was a mystery.
In answer to my questions, he made the following statement, in language
not to be anticipated from his dress, or the place in which he resided:
“For many years I lived by the sale of toys, such as little chairs,
tables, and a variety of other little things which I made myself and
sold in the streets; and I used to make a good deal of money by them;
I might have done well, but when a man hasn’t got a careful partner,
it’s of no use what he does, he’ll never get on, he may as well give
it up at once, for the money’ll go out ten times as fast as he can
bring it in. I hadn’t the good fortune to have a careful woman, but one
who, when I wouldn’t give her money to waste and destroy, took out my
property and made money of it to drink; where a bad example like that
is set, it’s sure to be followed; the good example is seldom taken,
but there’s no fear of the bad one. You may want to find out where the
evil lies, I tell you it lies in that pint pot, and in that quart pot,
and if it wasn’t for so many pots and so many pints, there wouldn’t
be half so much misery as there is. I know that from my own case. I
used to sell toys, but since the foreign things were let come over, I
couldn’t make anything of them, and was obliged to give them up. I was
forced to do something for a living, for a half loaf is better than no
bread at all, so seeing two or three selling salt, I took to it myself.
I buy my salt at Moore’s wharf, Paddington; I consider it the purest;
I could get salt 3_d._ or 2_d._ the cwt., or even cheaper, but I’d
rather have the best. A man’s not ashamed when he knows his articles
are good. Some buy the cheap salt, of course they make more profit. We
never sell by measure, always by weight; some of the street weights,
a good many of them, are slangs, but I believe they are as honest as
many of the shopkeepers after all; every one does the best he can to
cheat everybody else. I go two or three evenings in the week, or as
often as I want it, to the wharf for a load. I’m going there to-night,
three miles out and three miles in. I sell, considering everything,
about 2 cwt. a day; I sold 1-1/2 to-day, but to-morrow (Saturday)
I’ll sell 3 or 4 cwt., and perhaps more. I pay 2_s._ the cwt. for it,
and make about 1_s._ a cwt. profit on that. I sold sixpennyworth of
mustard to-day; it might bring me in 2_d._ profit, every little makes
something. If I wasn’t so weak and broke down, I wouldn’t trouble
myself with a donkey, it’s so expensive; I’d easily manage to drive
about all I’d sell, and then I’d save the expense. It costs me 7_d._
or 8_d._ a day to keep him, besides other things. I got him a set of
shoes yesterday, I said I’d shoe him first and myself afterwards; so
you see there’s other expenses. There’s my son, too, paid off the
other day from the _Prince of Wales_, after a four years’ voyage, and
he came home without a sixpence in his pocket. He might have done
something for me, but I couldn’t expect anything else from him after
the example that was set to him. Even now, bad as I am, I wouldn’t want
for anything if I had a careful woman; but she’s a shocking drunkard,
and I can do nothing with her.” This poor fellow’s mind was so full of
his domestic troubles that he recurred to them again and again, and was
more inclined to talk about what so nearly concerned himself than on
any matter of business.