The street-traders in old umbrellas and parasols are numerous, but the
buying is but one part, and the least skilled part, of the business.
Men, some tolerably well-dressed, some swarthy-looking, like gipsies,
and some with a vagabond aspect, may be seen in all quarters of the
town and suburbs, carrying a few ragged-looking umbrellas, or the
sticks or ribs of umbrellas, under their arms, and crying “Umbrellas
to mend,” or “Any old umbrellas to sell?” The traffickers in umbrellas
are also the crockmen, who are always glad to obtain them in barter,
and who merely dispose of them at the Old Clothes Exchange, or in
Petticoat-lane.
The umbrella-menders are known by an appellation of an appropriateness
not uncommon in street language. They are _mushroom-fakers_. The form
of the expanded umbrella resembles that of a mushroom, and it has
the further characteristic of being rapidly or suddenly raised, the
mushroom itself springing up and attaining its full size in a very
brief space of time. The term, however, like all street or popular
terms or phrases, has become very generally condensed among those who
carry on the trade--they are now _mush-fakers_, a word which, to any
one who has not heard the term in full, is as meaningless as any in the
vocabulary of slang.
The mushroom-fakers will repair any umbrella on the owner’s premises,
and their work is often done adroitly, I am informed, and as often
bunglingly, or, in the trade term, “botched.” So far there is no
traffic in the business, the mushroom-faker simply performing a piece
of handicraft, and being paid for the job. But there is another class
of street-folk who buy the old umbrellas in Petticoat-lane, or of the
street buyer or collector, and “sometimes,” as one of these men said to
me, “we are our own buyers on a round.” They mend the umbrellas--some
of their wives, I am assured, being adepts as well as themselves--and
offer them for sale on the approaches to the bridges, and at the
corners of streets.
The street umbrella trade is really curious. Not so very many years
back the use of an umbrella by a man was regarded as partaking of
effeminacy, but now they are sold in thousands in the streets, and in
the second-hand shops of Monmouth-street and such places. One of these
street-traders told me that he had lately sold, but not to an extent
which might encourage him to proceed, old silk umbrellas in the street
for gentlemen to protect themselves from the rays of the sun.
The purchase of umbrellas is in a great degree mixed up with that
of old clothes, of which I have soon to treat; but from what I have
stated it is evident that the umbrella trade is most connected with
street-artisanship, and under that head I shall describe it.