The persons who traverse the streets, or call periodically at certain
places to purchase articles which are usually sold at the door or
within the house, are--according to the division I laid down in the
first number of this work--STREET-BUYERS. The largest, and, in every
respect, the most remarkable body of these traders, are the buyers of
old clothes, and of them I shall speak separately, devoting at the same
time some space to the STREET-JEWS. It will also be necessary to give
a brief account of the Jews generally, for they are still a peculiar
race, and street and shop-trading among them are in many respects
closely blended.
The principal things bought by the itinerant purchasers consist of
waste-paper, hare and rabbit skins, old umbrellas and parasols, bottles
and glass, broken metal, rags, dripping, grease, bones, tea-leaves, and
old clothes.
With the exception of the buyers of waste-paper, among whom are many
active, energetic, and intelligent men, the street-buyers are of
the lower sort, both as to means and intelligence. The only further
exception, perhaps, which I need notice here is, that among some
umbrella-buyers, there is considerable smartness, and sometimes, in
the repair or renewal of the ribs, &c., a slight degree of skill. The
other street-purchasers--such as the hare-skin and old metal and rag
buyers, are often old and infirm people of both sexes, of whom--perhaps
by reason of their infirmities--not a few have been in the trade from
their childhood, and are as well known by sight in their respective
rounds, as was the “long-remembered beggar” in former times.
It is usually the lot of a poor person who has been driven to the
streets, or has adopted such a life when an adult, to _sell_ trifling
things--such as are light to carry and require a small outlay--in
advanced age. Old men and women totter about offering lucifer-matches,
boot and stay-laces, penny memorandum books, and such like. But the
elder portion of the street-folk I have now to speak of do not sell,
but _buy_. The street-seller commends his wares, their cheapness, and
excellence. The same sort of man, when a buyer, depreciates everything
offered to him, in order to ensure a cheaper bargain, while many of
the things thus obtained find their way into street-sale, and are then
as much commended for cheapness and goodness, as if they were the
stock-in-trade of an acute slop advertisement-monger, and this is done
sometimes by the very man who, when a buyer, condemned them as utterly
valueless. But this is common to all trades.