streets, the patterer is obliged to call at the houses. As they are
mostly without the hawker’s licence, and sometimes find wet linen
before it is lost, the rural districts are not fond of their visits;
and there are generally two or three persons in a village reported to
be “gammy,” that is (unfavourable). If a patterer has been “crabbed,”
that is (offended) at any of the “cribbs” (houses), he mostly chalks a
signal on or near the door. I give one or two instances:
[diamond] “Bone,” meaning good.
[triangle, point down] “Cooper’d,” spoiled by the imprudence
of some other patterer.
[square] “Gammy,” likely to have you taken up.
[circle with dot] “Flummuxed,” sure of a month in quod.
In most lodging-houses there is an old man who is the guide to every
“walk” in the vicinity, and who can tell every house, on every round,
that is “good for a cold ’tater.” In many cases there is over the
kitchen mantle-piece a map of the district, dotted here and there with
memorandums of failure or success.
Patterers are fond of carving their names and avocations about the
houses they visit. The old jail at Dartford has been some years a
“padding-ken.” In one of the rooms appears the following autographs:
“Jemmy, the Rake, bound to Bristol; bad beds, but no bugs. Thank God
for all things.”
“Razor George and his moll slept here the day afore Christmas; just
out of ‘stir’ (jail), for ‘muzzling a peeler.’”
“Scotch Mary, with ‘driz’ (lace), bound to Dover and back, please God.”
Sometimes these inscriptions are coarse and obscene; sometimes very
well written and orderly. Nor do they want illustrations.
At the old factory, Lincoln, is a portrait of the town beadle, formerly
a soldier; it is drawn with different-coloured chalks, and ends with
the following couplet:
“You are a B for false swearing,
In hell they’ll roast you like a herring.”
Concubinage is very common among patterers, especially on their
travels; they have their regular rounds, and call the peregrination
“going on circuit.” For the most part they are early risers; this gives
them a facility for meeting poor girls who have had a night’s shelter
in the union workhouses. They offer such girls some refreshment,--swear
they are single men,--and promise comforts certainly superior to the
immediate position of their victims. Consent is generally obtained;
perhaps a girl of 14 or 15, previously virtuous, is induced to believe
in a promise of constant protection, but finds herself, the next
morning, ruined and deserted; nor is it unlikely that, within a month
or two, she will see her seducer in the company of a dozen incidental
wives. A gray-headed miscreant called “Cutler Tom” boasts of 500 such
exploits; and there is too great reason to believe that the picture of
his own drawing is not greatly overcharged.
Some of the patterers are married men, but of this class very few
are faithful to the solemn obligation. I have heard of a renowned
patterer of this class who was married to four women, and had lived in
criminal intercourse with his own sister, and his own daughter by one
of the wives. This sad rule has, however, I am happy to state, some
splendid exceptions. There is a man called “Andy”--well known as the
companion of “Hopping Ned;” this “Andy” has a wife of great personal
attractions, a splendid figure, and teeth without a parallel. She is
a strictly-virtuous woman, a most devoted wife, and tender mother;
very charitable to any one in want of a meal, and very constant (she
is a Catholic) in her religious duties. Another man of the same
school, whose name has escaped me, is, with his wife, an exception to
the stigma on almost the whole class; the couple in question have no
children. The wife, whose name is Maria, has been in every hospital for
some complaint in her knees, probably white swelling: her beauty is the
theme of applause, and whenever she opens her mouth silence pervades
the “paddin’ ken.” Her common conversation is music and mathematics
combined, her reading has been masculine and extensive, and the whisper
of calumny has never yet attacked her own demeanour or her husband’s.
Of patterers who have children, many are very exemplary; sending them
to Day and Sunday-schools, causing them to say grace before and after
meals, to attend public worship, and always to speak the truth: these,
instances, however, stand in fearful contrast with the conduct of other
parents.
“I have seen,” proceeds my reverend informant, “fathers and mothers
place their boys and girls in positions of incipient enormity, and
command them to use language and gestures to each other, which would
make an harlot blush, and almost a heathen tremble. I have hitherto
viewed the patterer as a salesman,--having something in his hand, on
whose merits, real or pretended, he talks people out of their money. By
slow degrees prosperity rises, but rapid is the advance of evil. The
patterer sometimes gets ‘out of stock,’ and is obliged, at no great
sacrifice of conscience, to ‘patter’ in another strain. In every large
town sham official documents, with crests, seals, and signatures,
can be got for half-a-crown. Armed with these, the patterer becomes
a ‘lurker,’--that is, an impostor; his papers certify any and every
‘ill that flesh is heir to.’ Shipwreck is called a ‘shake lurk;’
loss by fire is a ‘glim.’ Sometimes the petitioner has had a horse,
which has dropped dead with the mad staggers; or has a wife ill or
dying, and six or seven children at once sickening of the small-pox.
Children are borrowed to support the appearance; the case is certified
by the minister and churchwardens of a parish which exists only in
imagination; and as many people dislike the trouble of investigation,
the patterer gets enough to raise a stock in trade, and divides the
spoil between the swag-shop and the gin-palace. Sometimes they are
detected, and get a ‘drag’ (three months in prison). They have many
narrow escapes: one occurs to me, of a somewhat ludicrous character. A
patterer and lurker (now dead) known by the name of ‘Captain Moody,’
unable to get a ‘fakement’ written or printed, was standing almost
naked in the streets of a neighbouring town. A gentleman stood still
and heard his piteous tale, but having been ‘done’ more than once,
he resolved to examine the affair, and begged the petitioner to
conduct him to his wife and children, who were in a garret on a bed of
languishing, with neither clothes, food, nor fire, but, it appeared,
with faith enough to expect a supply from ‘Him who feedeth the ravens,’
and in whose sacred name even a cold ’tater was implored. The patterer,
or half-patterer and half-beggar, took the gentleman (who promised a
sovereign if every thing was square) through innumerable and intricate
windings, till he came to an outhouse or sort of stable. He saw the
key outside the door, and begged the gentleman to enter and wait
till he borrowed a light of a neighbour, to show him up-stairs. The
illumination never arrived, and the poor charitable man found that the
miscreant had locked him into the stable. The patterer went to the
padding-ken,--told the story with great glee, and left that locality
within an hour of the occurrence.”
[Concerning the mendicancy and vagrancy of patterers, I shall have
more to say when I speak of vagrancy in general, and when I describe
the general state and characteristics of the low lodging-houses in
London, and those in the country, which are in intimate connection with
the metropolitan abodes of the vagrant. My present theme is the London
patterer, who is also a street-seller.]
OF THE PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS OF STREET-LITERATURE.
The best known, and the most successful printer and publisher of all
who have directed their industry to supply the “paper” in demand for
street sale, and in every department of street literature, was the late
“Jemmy Catnach,” who is said to have amassed upwards of 10,000_l._ in
the business. He is reported to have made the greater part of this
sum during the trial of Queen Caroline, by the sale of whole-sheet
“papers,” descriptive of the trial, and embellished with “splendid
illustrations.” The next to Catnach stood the late “Tommy Pitt,” of
the noted toy and marble-warehouse. These two parties were the Colburn
and Bentley of the “paper” trade. Catnach retired from business some
years ago, and resided in a country-house at Barnet, but he did not
long survive his retirement. “He was an out and out sort,” said one old
paper-worker to me, “and if he knew you--and he could judge according
to the school you belonged to, if he hadn’t known you long--he was
friendly for a bob or two, and sometimes for a glass. He knew the
men that was stickers though, and there was no glass for them. Why,
some of his customers, sir, would have stuck to him long enough, if
there’d been a chance of another glass--supposing they’d managed to get
_one_--and then would have asked him for a coach home! When I called on
him, he used to say, in his north country way--he wasn’t Scotch, but
somewhere north of England--and he was pleasant with it, ‘Well, d--
you, how are you?’ He got the cream of the pail, sir.”
The present street literature printers and publishers are, Mrs. Ryle
(Catnach’s niece and successor), Mr. Birt, and Mr. Paul (formerly with
Catnach), all of the Seven Dials; Mr. Powell (formerly of Lloyd’s),
Brick-lane, Whitechapel; and Mr. Good, Aylesbury-street, Clerkenwell.
Mr. Phairs, of Westminster; Mr. Taylor, of the Waterloo-road; and Mr.
Sharp, of Kent-street, Borough, have discontinued street printing. One
man greatly regretted Mr. Taylor’s discontinuing the business; “he was
so handy for the New-cut, when it _was_ the New-cut.” Some classes of
patterers, I may here observe, work in “schools” or “mobs” of two,
three, or four, as I shall afterwards show.
The authors and poets who give its peculiar literature, alike in
prose or rhyme, to the streets, are now six in number. They are all
in some capacity or other connected with street-patter or song, and
the way in which a narrative or a “copy of werses” is prepared for
press is usually this:--The leading members of the “schools,” some
of whom refer regularly to the evening papers, when they hear of
any out-of-the-way occurrence, resort to the printer and desire its
publication in a style proper for the streets. This is usually done
very speedily, the school (or the majority of them) and the printer
agreeing upon the author. Sometimes an author will voluntarily prepare
a piece of street literature and submit it to a publisher, who, as in
the case of other publishers, accepts or declines, as he believes the
production will or will not prove remunerative. Sometimes the school
carry the manuscript with them to the printer, and undertake to buy a
certain quantity, to insure publication. The payment to the author is
the same in all cases--a shilling.
Concerning the history and character of our street and public-house
literature, I shall treat hereafter, when I can comprise the whole, and
after the descriptions of the several classes engaged in the trade will
have paved the way for the reader’s better appreciation of the curious
and important theme. I say, _important_; because the street-ballad and
the street-narrative, like all popular things, have their influence on
masses of the people. Specimens will be found adduced, as I describe
the several classes, or in the statements of the patterers.
It must be borne in mind that the street author is closely restricted
in the quality of his effusion. It must be such as the patterers
approve, as the chaunters can chaunt, the ballad-singers sing,
and--above all--such as street-buyers will buy. One chaunter, who was a
great admirer of the “Song of the Shirt,” told me that if Hood himself
had written the “Pitiful Case of Georgy Sloan and his Wife,” it would
not have sold so well as a ballad he handed to me, from which I extract
a verse:
“Jane Willbred we did starve and beat her very hard
I confess we used her very cruel,
But now in a jail two long years we must bewail,
We don’t fancy mustard in the gruel.”
What I have said of the _necessity_ which controls street authorship,
may also be said of the art which is sometimes called in to illustrate
it.
The paper now published for the streets is classed as quarter sheets,
which cost (wholesale) 1_s._ a gross; half sheets, which cost 2_s._;
and whole or broad sheets (such as for executions), which cost 3_s._
6_d._ a gross the first day, and 3_s._ the next day or two, and
afterwards, but only if a ream be taken, 5_s._ 6_d._; a ream contains
forty dozen. When “illustrated,” the charge is from 3_d._ to 1_s._ per
ream extra. The books, for such cases as the Sloanes, or the murder of
Jael Denny, are given in books--which are best adapted for the suburban
and country trade, when London is “worked” sufficiently--are the “whole
sheet” printed so as to fold into eight pages, each side of the paper
being then, of course, printed upon. A book is charged from 6_d._ to
1_s._ extra (to a whole sheet) per gross, and afterwards the same extra
per ream.
OF LONG SONG-SELLERS.
I have this week given a daguerreotype of a well-known long-song
seller, and have preferred to give it as the trade, especially as
regards London, has all but disappeared, and it was curious enough.
“Long songs” first appeared between nine and ten years ago.
The long-song sellers did not depend upon patter--though some of them
pattered a little--to attract customers, but on the veritable cheapness
and novel form in which they vended popular songs, printed on paper
rather wider than this page, “three songs abreast,” and the paper
was about a yard long, which constituted the “three” yards of song.
Sometimes three slips were pasted together. The vendors paraded the
streets with their “three yards of new and popular songs” for a penny.
The songs are, or were, generally fixed to the top of a long pole, and
the vendor “cried” the different titles as he went along. This branch
of “the profession” is confined solely to the summer; the hands in
winter usually taking to the sale of song-books, it being impossible
to exhibit “the three yards” in wet or foggy weather. The paper songs,
as they fluttered from a pole, looked at a little distance like
huge much-soiled white ribbons, used as streamers to celebrate some
auspicious news. The cry of one man, in a sort of recitative, or, as
I heard it called by street-patterers, “sing-song,” was, “Three yards
a penny! Three yards a penny! Beautiful songs! Newest songs! Popular
Songs! Three yards a penny! Song, song, songs!” Others, however,
were generally content to announce merely “Three yards a penny!” One
cried “Two under fifty a fardy!” As if two hundred and fifty songs
were to be sold for a farthing. The whole number of songs was about
45. They were afterwards sold at a halfpenny, but were shorter and
fewer. It is probable that at the best had the songs been subjected
to the admeasurement of a jury, the result might have been as little
satisfactory as to some tradesmen who, however, after having been
detected in attempts to cheat the poor in weights and scales, and to
cheat them hourly, are still “good men and true” enough to be jurymen
and parliamentary electors. The songs, I am informed, were often about
2-1/2 yards, (not as to paper but as to admeasurement of type); 3
yards, occasionally, at first, and not often less than 2 yards.
The crying of the titles was not done with any other design than that
of expressing the great number of songs purchasable for “the small
charge of one penny.” Some of the patterers I conversed with would
have made it sufficiently droll. One man told me that he had cried the
following songs in his three yards, and he believed in something like
the following order, but he had cried penny song books, among other
things, lately, and might confound his more ancient and recent cries:
“I sometimes began,” he said, “with singing, or trying to sing, for
I’m no vocalist, the first few words of any song, and them quite loud.
I’d begin
‘The Pope he leads a happy life,
He knows no care’----
‘Buffalo gals, come out to-night;’ ‘Death of Nelson;’ ‘The gay
cavalier;’ ‘Jim along Josey;’ ‘There’s a good time coming;’ ‘Drink
to me only;’ ‘Kate Kearney;’ ‘Chuckaroo-choo, choo-choo-choot-lah;’
‘Chockala-roony-ninkaping-nang;’ ‘Paga-daway-dusty-kanty-key;’
‘Hottypie-gunnypo-china-coo’ (that’s a Chinese song, sir); ‘I dreamed
that I dwelt in marble halls;’ ‘The standard bearer;’ ‘Just like love;’
‘Whistle o’er the lave o’t;’ ‘Widow Mackree;’ ‘I’ve been roaming;’ ‘Oh!
that kiss;’ ‘The old English gentleman,’ &c., &c. &c. I dares say they
was all in the three yards, or was once, and if they wasn’t there was
others as good.”
The chief purchasers of the “long songs” were boys and girls, but
mostly boys, who expended 1_d._ or 1/2_d._ for the curiosity and
novelty of the thing, as the songs were not in the most readable form.
A few working people bought them for their children, and some women of
the town, who often buy anything fantastic, were also customers.
When “the three yards was at their best,” the number selling them
was about 170; the wholesale charge is from 3_d._ to 5_d._ a dozen,
according to size. The profit of the vendors in the first instance
was about 8_d._ a dozen. When the trade had all the attractions of
novelty, some men sold ten dozen on fine days, and for three or four
of the summer months; so clearing between 6_s._ and 7_s._ a day. This,
however, was not an average, but an average might be at first 21_s._
a week profit. I am assured that if twenty persons were selling long
songs in the street last summer it was “the outside,” as long songs
are now “for fairs and races and country work.” Calculating that each
cleared 9_s._ in a week, and to clear that took 15_s._, the profit
being smaller than it used to be, as many must be sold at 1/2_d._
each--we find 120_l._ expended in long songs in the streets. The
character of the vendor is that of a patterer of inferior genius.
The stock-money required is 1_s._ to 2_s._; which with 2_d._ for a
pole, and 1/2_d._ for paste, is all the capital needed. Very few were
sold in the public-houses, as the vendors scrupled to expose them
there, “for drunken fellows would snatch them, and make belts of them
for a lark.”
OF RUNNING PATTERERS.
Few of the residents in London--but chiefly those in the quieter
streets--have not been aroused, and most frequently in the evening,
by a hurly-burly on each side of the street. An attentive listening
will not lead any one to an accurate knowledge of what the clamour is
about. It is from a “mob” or “school” of the running patterers (for
both those words are used), and consists of two, three, or four men.
All these men state that the greater the noise they make, the better
is the chance of sale, and better still when the noise is on each
side of a street, for it appears as if the vendors were proclaiming
such interesting or important intelligence, that they were vieing
with one another who should supply the demand which must ensue. It
is not possible to ascertain with any certitude _what_ the patterers
are so anxious to sell, for only a few leading words are audible. One
of the cleverest of running patterers repeated to me, in a subdued
tone, his announcements of murders. The words “Murder,” “Horrible,”
“Barbarous,” “Love,” “Mysterious,” “Former Crimes,” and the like, could
only be caught by the ear, but there was no announcement of anything
like “particulars.” If, however, the “paper” relate to any well-known
criminal, such as Rush, the name is given distinctly enough, and so
is any new or pretended fact. The running patterers describe, or
profess to describe, the contents of their papers as they go rapidly
along, and they seldom or ever stand still. They usually deal in
murders, seductions, crim.-cons., explosions, alarming accidents,
“assassinations,” deaths of public characters, duels, and love-letters.
But popular, or notorious, murders are the “great goes.” The running
patterer cares less than other street-sellers for bad weather, for
if he “work” on a wet and gloomy evening, and if the work be “a
cock,” which is a fictitious statement or even a pretended fictitious
statement, there is the less chance of any one detecting the _ruse_.
But of late years no new “cocks” have been printed, excepting for
temporary purposes, such as I have specified as under its appropriate
head in my account of “Death and Fire-Hunters.” Among the old
stereotyped “cocks” are love-letters. One is well known as “The Husband
caught in a Trap,” and being in an epistolary form subserves any
purpose: whether it be the patterer’s aim to sell the “Love Letters” of
any well-known person, such as Lola Montes, or to fit them for a local
(pretended) scandal, as the “Letters from a Lady in this neighbourhood
to a Gentleman not 100 miles off.”
Of running patterers there are now in London from 80 to 100. They
reside--some in their own rooms, but the majority in lodging-houses--in
or near Westminster, St Giles’s, Whitechapel, Stratford, Deptford,
Wandsworth, and the Seven Dials. The “Dials,” however, is their chief
locality, being the residence of the longest-established printers, and
is the “head meet” of the fraternity.
It is not easy to specify with exactitude the number of running or
flying patterers at any one time in London. Some of these men become,
occasionally, standing patterers, chaunters, or ballad-singers--classes
I shall subsequently describe--and all of them resort at intervals
to country rounds. I heard, also, many complaints of boys having of
late “taken to the running patter” when anything attractive was before
the public, and of ignorant fellows--that wouldn’t have thought of it
at one time--“trying their hands at it.” Waiving these exceptional
augmentations of the number, I will take the body of running patterers,
generally employed in their peculiar craft in London, at 90. To
ascertain their earnings presents about the same difficulties as to
ascertain their number; for as all they earn is spent--no patterer ever
saving money--they themselves are hardly able to tell their incomes.
If any new and exciting fact be before the public, these men may each
clear 20_s._ a week; when there is no such fact, they may not earn
5_s._ The profit is contingent, moreover, upon their being able to
obtain 1_d._, or only 1/2_d._, for their paper. Some represented their
average weekly earnings at 12_s._ 6_d._ the year through; some at
10_s._ 6_d._; and others at less than half of 12_s._ 6_d._ Reckoning,
however, that only 9_s._ weekly is an average profit per individual,
and that 14_s._ be taken to realise that profit, we find 3,276_l._
expended yearly on running patterers in London; but in that sum the
takings of the chaunters must be included, as they are members of the
same fraternity, and work with the patterers.
The capital required to commence as a running patterer is but the
price of a few papers--from 2_d._ to 1_s._ The men have no distinctive
dress: “our togs,” said one of them, “is in the latest fashion of
Petticoat-lane;” unless on the very rare occasions, when some character
has to be personated, and then coloured papers and glazed calicoes are
made available. But this is only a venture of the old hands.
[Illustration: LONG-SONG SELLER.
“Two under fifty for a fardy’!”
[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]
EXPERIENCE OF A RUNNING PATTERER.
From a running patterer, who has been familiar with the trade for
many years, I received, upwards of a twelvemonth ago, the following
statement. He is well known for his humour, and is a leading man in his
fraternity. After some conversation about “cocks,” the most popular of
which, my informant said, was the murder at Chigwell-row, he continued: