These buyers are for the most part poor, old, or infirm people, and
I am informed that the majority have been in some street business,
and often as buyers, all their lives. Besides having derived this
information from well-informed persons, I may point out that this
is but a reasonable view of the case. If a mechanic, a labourer,
or a gentleman’s servant, resorts to the streets for his bread, or
because he is of a vagrant “turn,” he does not become a _buyer_, but
a _seller_. Street-selling is the easier process. It is easy for a
man to ascertain that oysters, for example, are sold wholesale at
Billingsgate, and if he buy a bushel (as in the present summer) for
5_s._, it is not difficult to find out how many he can afford for “a
penny a lot.” But the street-buyer must not only know what to _give_,
for hare-skins for instance, but what he can depend upon _getting_
from the hat-manufacturers, or hat-furriers, and upon having a regular
market. Thus a double street-trade knowledge is necessary, and a novice
will not care to meddle with any form of open-air traffic but the
simplest. Neither is street-buying (old clothes excepted) generally
cared for by adults who have health and strength.
In the course of a former inquiry I received an account of
hareskin-buying from a woman, upwards of fifty, who had been in the
trade, she told me, from childhood, “as was her mother before her.”
The husband, who was lame, and older than his wife, had been all _his_
life a field-catcher of birds, and a street-seller of hearth-stones.
They had been married 31 years, and resided in a garret of a house, in
a street off Drury-lane--a small room, with a close smell about it.
The room was not unfurnished--it was, in fact, crowded. There were
bird-cages, with and without birds, over what _was_ once a bed; for
the bed, just prior to my visit, had been sold to pay the rent, and a
month’s rent was again in arrear; and there were bird-cages on the wall
by the door, and bird-cages over the mantelshelf. There was furniture,
too, and crockery; and a vile oil painting of “still life;” but an eye
used to the furniture in the rooms of the poor could at once perceive
that there was not _one_ article which could be sold to a broker or
marine-store dealer, or pledged at a pawn-shop. I was told the man and
woman both drank hard. The woman said:--
“I’ve sold hareskins all my life, sir, and was born in London; but when
hareskins isn’t in, I sells flowers. I goes about now (in November)
for my skins every day, wet or dry, and all day long--that is, till
it’s dark. To-day I’ve not laid out a penny, but then it’s been such a
day for rain. I reckon that if I gets hold of eighteen hare and rabbit
skins in a day, that is my greatest day’s work. I gives 2_d._ for
good hares, what’s not riddled much, and sells them all for 2-1/2_d._
I sells what I pick up, by the twelve or the twenty, if I can afford
to keep them by me till that number’s gathered, to a Jew. I don’t
know what is done with them. I can’t tell you just what use they’re
for--something about hats.” [The Jew was no doubt a hat-furrier, or
supplying a hat-furrier.] “Jews gives us better prices than Christians,
and buys readier; so I find. Last week I sold all I bought for 3_s._
6_d._ I take some weeks as much as 8_s._ for what I pick up, and if
I could get that every week I should think myself a lady. The profit
left me a clear half-crown. There’s no difference in any perticler
year--only that things gets worse. The game laws, as far as I knows,
hasn’t made no difference in my trade. Indeed, I can’t say I knows
anything about game laws at all, or hears anything consarning ’em. I
goes along the squares and streets. I buys most at gentlemen’s houses.
We never calls at hotels. The servants, and the women that chars,
and washes, and jobs, manages it there. Hareskins is in--leastways I
c’lects them--from September to the end of March, when hares, they
says, goes mad. I can’t say what I makes one week with another--perhaps
2_s._ 6_d._ may be cleared every week.”
These buyers go regular rounds, carrying the skins in their hands, and
crying, “Any hareskins, cook? Hareskins.” It is for the most part a
winter trade; but some collect the skins all the year round, as the
hares are now vended the year through; but by far the most are gathered
in the winter. Grouse may not be killed excepting from the 12th, and
black-game from the 20th of August to the 10th of December; partridges
from the 1st of September to the 1st of February; while the pheasant
suffers a shorter season of slaughter, from the 1st of October to the
1st of February; but there is no time restriction as to the killing of
hares or of rabbits, though custom causes a cessation for a few months.
A lame man, apparently between 50 and 60, with a knowing look, gave
me the following account. When I saw him he was carrying a few tins,
chiefly small dripping-pans, under his arm, which he offered for
sale as he went his round collecting hare and rabbit skins, of which
he carried but one. He had been in the streets all his life, as his
mother--he never knew any father--was a rag-gatherer, and at the same
time a street-seller of the old brimstone matches and papers of pins.
My informant assisted his mother to make and then to sell the matches.
On her last illness she was received into St. Giles’s workhouse, her
son supporting himself out of it; she had been dead many years. He
could not read, and had never been in a church or chapel in his life.
“He had been married,” he said, “for about a dozen years, and had a
very good wife,” who was also a street-trader until her death; but “we
didn’t go to church or anywhere to be married,” he told me, in reply
to my question, “for we really couldn’t afford to pay the parson, and
so we took one another’s words. If it’s so good to go to church for
being married, it oughtn’t to cost a poor man nothing; he shouldn’t be
charged for being good. I doesn’t do any business in town, but has my
regular rounds. This is my Kentish and Camden-town day. I buys most
from the servants at the bettermost houses, and I’d rather buy of them
than the missusses, for some missusses sells their own skins, and they
often want a deal for ’em. Why, just arter last Christmas, a young
lady in that there house (pointing to it), after ordering me round to
the back-door, came to me with two hareskins. They certainly was fine
skins--werry fine. I said I’d give 4-1/2_d._ ‘Come now, my good man,’
says she,” and the man mimicked her voice, “‘let me have no nonsense. I
can’t be deceived any longer, either by you or my servants; so give me
8_d._, and go about your business.’ Well, I went about my business; and
a woman called to buy them, and offered 4_d._ for the two, and the lady
was so wild, the servant told me arter; howsomever she only got 4_d._
at last. She’s a regular screw, but a fine-dressed one. I don’t know
that there’s been any change in my business since hares was sold in the
shops. If there’s more skins to sell, there’s more poor people to buy.
I never tasted hares’ flesh in my life, though I’ve gathered so many of
their skins. I’ve smelt it when they’ve been roasting them where I’ve
called, but don’t think I could eat any. I live on bread and butter and
tea, or milk sometimes in hot weather, and get a bite of fried fish or
anything when I’m out, and a drop of beer and a smoke when I get home,
if I can afford it. I don’t smoke in my own place, I uses a beer-shop.
I pay 1_s._ 6_d._ a week for a small room; I want little but a bed in
it, and have my own. I owe three weeks’ rent now; but I do best both
with tins and hareskins in the cold weather. Monday’s my best day. O,
as to rabbit-skins, I do werry little in them. Them as sells them gets
the skins. Still there _is_ a few to be picked up; such as them as has
been sent as presents from the country. Good rabbit-skins is about
the same price as hares, or perhaps a halfpenny lower, take them all
through. I generally clears 6_d._ a dozen on my hare and rabbit-skins,
and sometimes 8_d._ Yes, I should say that for about eight months I
gathers four dozen every week, often five dozen. I suppose I make 5_s._
or 6_s._ a week all the year, with one thing or other, and a lame man
can’t do wonders. I never begged in my life, but I’ve twice had help
from the parish, and that only when I was very bad (ill). O, I suppose
I shall end in the great house.”
There are, as closely as I can ascertain, at least 50 persons buying
skins in the street; and calculating that each collects 50 skins
weekly for 32 weeks of the year, we find 80,000 to be the total. This
is a reasonable computation, for there are upwards of 102,000 hares
consigned yearly to Newgate and Leadenhall markets; while the rabbits
sold yearly in London amount to about 1,000,000; but, as I have shown,
very few of their skins are disposed of to street-buyers.