4_d._ the hundred, or in that proportion for half or quarter-hundreds.
If a smaller quantity be purchased, the charge is usually thirteen
for 6_d._; though they used to be only twelve for 6_d._ These sellers
are among the poorest of the poor; after they have had one meal, they
do not know how to get another. They reside in the lowest localities,
and some few are abandoned and profligate in character. They reckon it
a good night to earn 1_s._ clear, but upon an average they clear but
3_s._ per week. They lose sometimes by not selling out their nightly
stock. What they have left, they are obliged to sell for waste-paper at
2_d._ per lb. Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide are generally their
best times--they will then make 9_d._ per night clear. The printer of
the play-bills prints but a certain number, the demand being nearly
ascertained week by week. These are all sold (by the printer or some
person appointed) to the regular customers, in preference to others,
but the “irregulars” can get supplied, though often not without
trouble. The profit on all sold is rather more than cent. per cent. As
I have intimated, when some theatres are closed, the bill-sellers are
driven to others; and as the demand is necessarily limited, a superflux
of sellers affects the profits, and then 2_s._ 6_d._ is considered a
good week’s work. During the opera season, I am told, a few mechanics,
out of work, will sell bills there and books of the opera, making about
6_s._ a week, and doing better than the regular hands, as they have a
better address and are better clad.
Taking the profits at 3_s._ a week at cent. per cent. on the
outlay, and reckoning 200 sellers, including those at the saloons,
concert-rooms, &c., we find that 60_l._ is now expended weekly on
play-bills purchased in the streets of London.
OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF PERIODICALS, PAMPHLETS, TRACTS, BOOKS, ETC.
These street-sellers are a numerous body, and the majority of them
show a greater degree of industry and energy than is common to many
classes of street-folk. They have been for the most part connected
with the paper, newspaper, or publishing trade, and some of them have
“known better days.” One intelligent man I met with, a dealer in
“waste” (paper), had been brought up as a compositor, but late hours
and glaring gas-lights in the printing-office affected his eyes, he
told me; and as a half-blind compositor was about of as little value,
he thought, as a “horse with a wooden leg,” he abandoned his calling
for out-of-door labour. Another had been a gun-smith, and when out of
his apprenticeship was considered a “don hand at hair triggers, for
hair triggers were more wanted then,” but an injury to his right hand
and arm had disabled him as a mechanic, and he had recourse to the
streets. A third had been an ink-maker’s “young man,” and had got to
like the streets by calling for orders, and delivering bottles of ink,
at the shops of the small stationers and chandlers, and so he had taken
to them for a living. Of the book-stall-keepers I heard of one man who
had died a short time before, and who “once had been in the habit of
buying better books for his own pleasure than he had afterwards to sell
for his bread.” Of the book-stall proprietors, I have afterwards spoken
more fully.
All the street-sellers in question are what street estimation
pronounces to be educated men; they can all, as far as I could
ascertain, read and write, and some of them were “keenish politicians,
both free-traders, and against free-trade when they was a-talking of
the better days when they was young.” Nearly all are married men with
families.
The divisions into which these street traffickers may be formed
are--Odd Number-sellers--Steamboat Newsvendors--Railway Newsvendors,
(though the latter is now hardly a street traffic),--the Sellers
of Second Editions (which I have already given as a portion of the
patterers)--Board-workers (also previously described, and for the same
reason)--Tract-sellers (of whom I have given the number, character,
&c., and who are regarded by the other street-sellers as the idlers,
beggars, and pretenders of the trade),--the Sellers of Childrens’ Books
and Song Books--Book-auctioneers, and Book-stall-keepers.
OF THE STREET-SALE OF BACK NUMBERS.
This trade is carried on by the same class of patterers as work
race-cards, second editions, &c. The collectors of waste-paper
frequently find back numbers of periodicals in “a lot” they may have
purchased at a coffee-shop. These they sell to warehousemen who serve
the street-sellers. The largest lot ever sold at one time was some six
or seven years ago, of the _Pictorial Times_, at least a ton weight. A
dealer states--
“I lost the use of this arm ever since I was three months old. My
mother died when I was ten years of age, and after that my father took
up with an Irishwoman, and turned me and my youngest sister (she was
two years younger than me) out into the streets. My youngest sister got
employment at my father’s trade, but I couldn’t get no work because
of my crippled arm. I walked about, till I fell down in the streets
for want. At last, a man, who had a sweetmeat-shop, took pity on me.
His wife made the sweetmeats, and minded the shop while he went out
a juggling in the streets, in the Ramo Samee line. He told me as how,
if I would go round the country with him and sell a few prints while
he was a juggling in the public-houses, he’d find me in wittles, and
pay my lodging. I joined him, and stopped with him two or three year.
After that I went to work for a werry large waste-paper dealer. He
used to buy up all the old back numbers of the cheap periodicals and
penny publications, and send me out with them to sell at a farden’
a piece. He used to give me 4_d._ out of every shilling, and I done
very well with that, till the periodicals came so low, and so many on
’em, that they wouldn’t sell at all. Sometimes I could make 15_s._
on a Saturday night and a Sunday morning, a-selling the odd numbers
of periodicals,--such as tales; ‘Tales of the Wars,’ ‘Lives of the
Pirates,’ ‘Lives of the Highwaymen,’ &c. I’ve often sold as many as
2,000 numbers on a Saturday night in the New-cut, and the most of them
was works about thieves, and highwaymen, and pirates. Besides me, there
was three others at the same business. Altogether, I dare say my master
alone used to get rid of 10,000 copies of such works on a Saturday
night and a Sunday morning. Our principal customers was young men. My
master made a good bit of money at it. He had been about eighteen years
in the business, and had begun with 2_s._ 6_d._ I was with him fifteen
year, on and off, and at the best time. I used to earn my 30_s._ a week
full at that time. But then I was foolish, and didn’t take care of my
money. When I was at the ‘odd number business,’ I bought a peep-show,
and left the trade to go into that line.”
OF THE SALE OF WASTE NEWSPAPERS AT BILLINGSGATE.
This trade is so far peculiar that it is confined to Billingsgate,
as in that market alone the demand supplies a livelihood to the
man who carries it on. His principal sale is of newspapers to the
street-fishmongers, as a large surface of paper is required for the
purposes of a fish-stall. The “waste” trade--for “waste” and not
“waste-paper” is the word always applied--is not carried on with such
facility as might be expected, for I was assured that “waste” is so
scarce that only a very insufficient supply of paper can at present be
obtained. “I hope things will change soon, sir,” said one collector,
gravely to me, “or I shall hardly be able to keep myself and my family
on my waste.”
This difficulty, however, does not affect such a street-seller as the
man at Billingsgate, who buys of the collectors--“collecting,” however,
a portion himself at the neighbouring coffee-shops, public houses, &c.;
for the wants of a regular customer must, by some means or other, be
supplied.
The Billingsgate paper-seller carries his paper round, offering it
to his customers, or to those he wishes to make purchasers; some
fishmongers, however, obtain their “waste” first-hand from the
collectors, or buy it at a news-agent’s.
The retail price varies from 2_d._ to 3-1/2_d._ the pound, but
3-1/2_d._ is only given for “very clean and prime, and perhaps uncut,”
newspapers; for when a newsvendor has, as it is called, “over-stocked”
himself, he sells the uncut papers at last to the collector, or the
“waste” consumer. This happens, I was told, twenty times as often with
the “weeklys” as the “dailys;” for, said my informant, “suppose it’s
a wet Sunday morning--and all newsvendors as does pray, prays for wet
Sundays, because then people stays at home and buys a paper, or some
number, to read and pass away the time. Well, sir, suppose it’s a
soaker in the morning, the newsman buys a good lot, an extra nine, or
two extra nines, or the like of that, and then may be, after all, it
comes out a fine day, and so he’s over-stocked; in which case there’s
some for the waste.”
When they consider it a favourable opportunity, the workers carry waste
to offer to the Billingsgate salesmen; but the chief trade is in the
hands of the regular frequenter of the market.
From the best information I could obtain, it appears that from 70 to
100 pounds weight of “waste”--about three-fourths being newspapers,
of which some are foreign--is supplied to Billingsgate market and
its visitants. Two numbers of the _Times_, with their supplements,
one paper-buyer told me, “when cleverly damped, and they’re never
particularly dry,” will weigh about a pound. The average price is not
less than 2-1/2_d._ a pound, or from that to 3_d._ A single paper is
1_d._ At 2-1/2_d._ per pound, and 85 pounds a day, upwards of 275_l._
is spent yearly in waste paper at Billingsgate, in the street or
open-air purchase alone.
OF THE SALE OF PERIODICALS ON THE STEAM-BOATS AND STEAM-BOAT PIERS.
In this traffic are engaged about 20 men, “when the days are light
until eight o’clock;” from 10 to 15, if the winter be a hard winter;
and if the river steamers are unable to run--none at all. This winter,
however, there has been no cessation in the running of the “boats,”
except on a few foggy days. The steam-boat paper-sellers are generally
traders on their own account (all, I believe, have been connected with
the newsvendors’ trade); some few are the servants of newsvendors, sent
out to deal at the wharfs and on board the boats.
The trade is not so remunerative that any payment is made to the
proprietors of the boats or wharfs for the privilege of selling papers
there (as in the case of the railways), but it is necessary to “obtain
leave,” from those who have authority to give it.
The steam-boat paper-seller steps on board a few minutes before the
boat starts, when there are a sufficient number of voyagers assembled.
He traverses the deck and dives into the cabins, offering his “papers,”
the titles of which he announces: “Punch, penny Punch, _real_
Punch, last number for 3_d._--comic sheets, a penny--all the London
periodicals--Guide to the Thames.”
From one of these frequenters of steam-boats for the purposes of his
business, I had the following account:
“I was a news-agent’s boy, sir, near a pier, for three or four year,
then I got a start for myself, and now I serve a pier. It’s not such
a trade as you might think, still it’s bread and cheese and a drop of
beer. I go on board to sell my papers. It’s seldom I sell a newspaper;
there’s no call for it on the river, except at the foreign-going
ships--a few as is sold to them--but I don’t serve none on ’em. People
reads the news for nothing at the coffee-shops when they breakfasts,
I s’pose, and goes on as if they took in the _Times_, _Chron_, and
_’Tiser_--pubs. we calls the _’Tiser_--all to their own cheek. It’s
penny works I sell the most of; indeed, it’s very seldom I offer
anything else, ’cause it’s little use. Penny Punches is fair sale, and
I calls it ‘Punch’--just Punch. It’s dead now, I believe, but there’s
old numbers; still they’ll be done in time. The real Punch--I sell from
six to twelve a week--I call that there as the reel Punch. Galleries
of Comicalities is a middling sale; people take them home with them,
I think. Guides to the Thames is good in summer. They’re illustrated;
but people sometimes grumbles and calls them catchpennies. It ain’t my
fault if they’re not all that’s expected, but people expects everything
for 1_d._ Joe Millers and ’Stophelees” (Mephistopheles) “I’ve sold,
and said they was oppositions to Punch; that’s a year or more back,
but they was old, and to be had cheap. I sell Lloyd’s and Reynolds’s
pennies--fairish, both of them; so’s the Family Herald and the London
Journal--very fair. I don’t venture on any three-halfpenny books on
anything like a spec., acause people says at once: ‘A penny--I’ll
give you a penny.’ I sell seven out of eight of what I do sell to
gents.; more than that, perhaps; for you’ll not often see a woman
buy nothing wots intended to improve her mind. A young woman, like a
maid of all work, buys sometimes and looks hard at the paper; but I
sometimes thinks it’s to show she can read. A summer Sunday’s my best
time, out and out. There’s new faces then, and one goes on bolder.
I’ve known young gents. buy, just to offer to young women, I’m pretty
well satisfied. It’s a introduction. _I have_ met with real gentlemen.
They’ve looked over all I offered for sale and then said: ‘Nothing I
want, my good fellow, but here’s a penny for your trouble.’ I wish
there was more of them. I do sincerely. Sometimes I’ve gone on board
and not sold one paper. I buy in the regular way, 9_d._ for a dozen
(sometimes thirteen to the dozen) of penny pubs. I don’t know what I
make, for I keep no count; perhaps a sov. in a good week and a half in
another.”
I am informed that the average earnings of these traders, altogether,
may be taken at 15_s._ weekly; calculating that twelve carry on the
trade the year through, we find that (assuming each man to sell at
thirty-three per cent. profit--though in the case of old works it will
be cent. per cent.) upwards of 1,500_l._ are expended annually in
steam-boat papers.
OF THE SALE OF NEWSPAPERS, BOOKS, &C., AT THE RAILWAY STATIONS.
Although the sale of newspapers at the railway termini, &c., cannot
strictly be classed as a street-sale, it is so far an open-air traffic
as to require some brief notice, and it has now become a trade of no
small importance.
The privilege of selling to railway-passengers, within the precincts
of the terminus, is disposed of by tender. At present the newsvendor
on the North-Western Line, I am informed, pays to the company, for
the right of sale at the Euston-square terminus, and the provincial
stations, as large a sum as 1,700_l._ per annum. The amount usually
given is of course in proportion to the number of stations, and the
traffic of the railway.
The purchaser of this exclusive privilege sends his own servants
to sell the newspapers and books, which he supplies to them in the
quantity required. The men thus engaged are paid from 20_s._ to 30_s._
a week, and the boys receive from 6_s._ to 10_s._ 6_d._ weekly, but
rarely 10_s._ 6_d._
All the morning and evening papers are sold at the Station, but of the
weekly press, those are sent for sale which in the manager’s judgment
are likely to sell, or which his agent informs him are “asked for.” It
is the same with the weekly unstamped publications. The reason seems
obvious; if there be more than can be sold, a dead loss is incurred,
for the surplusage, as regards newspapers, is only saleable as waste
paper.
The books sold at railways are nearly all of the class best known
as “light reading,” or what some account light reading. The price
does not often exceed 1_s._; and among the books offered for sale in
these places are novels in one volume, published at 1_s._--sometimes
in two volumes, at 1_s._ each; “monthly parts” of works issued in
weekly numbers; shilling books of poetry; but rarely political or
controversial pamphlets. One man, who understood this trade, told me
that “a few of the pamphlets about the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman sold
at first; but in a month or six weeks, people began to say, ‘A shilling
for that! I’m sick of the thing.’”
The large sum given for the privilege of an exclusive sale, shows
that the number of books and papers sold at railway stations must be
very considerable. But it must be borne in mind, that the price, and
consequently the profit on the daily newspapers, sold at the railways,
is greater than elsewhere. None are charged less than 6_d._, the
regular price at a news-agent’s shop being 5_d._, so that as the cost
price is 4_d._ the profit is double. Nor is it unusual for a passenger
by an early train, who grows impatient for his paper, to cry out,
“A shilling for the _Times_!” This, however, is only the case, I am
told, with those who start very early in the morning; for the daily
papers are obtained for the railway stations from among the earliest
impressions, and can be had at the accustomed price as early as six
o’clock, although, if there be exciting news and a great demand, a
larger amount may be given.
OF THE STREET BOOKSELLERS.
The course of my inquiry now leads me to consider one of the oldest,
and certainly not least important of the street traffics--that of
the book-stalls. Of these there are now about twenty in the London
streets, but in this number I include only those which are _properly_
street-stalls. Many book-stalls, as in such a locality as the
London-road, are appendages to shops, being merely a display of wares
outside the bookseller’s premises; and with these I do not now intend
to deal.
The men in this trade I found generally to be intelligent. They
have been, for the most part, engaged in some minor department of
the book-selling or newspaper trade, in the regular way, and are
unconnected with the street-sellers in other lines, of whose pursuits,
habits, and characters, they seem to know nothing.
The street book-stalls are most frequent in the thoroughfares which are
well-frequented, but which, as one man in the trade expressed himself,
are not so “shoppy” as others--such as the City-road, the New-road,
and the Old Kent-road. “If there’s what you might call a recess,”
observed another street book-stall-keeper, “_that’s_ the place for us;
and you’ll often see us along with flower-stands and pinners-up.” The
stalls themselves do not present any very smart appearance; they are
usually of plain deal. If the stock of books be sufficiently ample,
they are disposed on the surface of the stall, “fronts up,” as I heard
it described, with the titles, when lettered on the back, like as they
are presented in a library. If the “front” be unlettered, as is often
the case with the older books, a piece of paper is attached, and on
it is inscribed the title and the price. Sometimes the description is
exceeding curt, as, “Poetry,” “French,” “Religious,” “Latin” (I saw an
odd volume, in Spanish, of Don Quixote, marked “Latin,” but it was at
a shop-seller’s stall,) “Pamphlets,” and such like; or where it seems
to have been thought necessary to give a somewhat fuller appellation,
such titles are written out as “Locke’s Understanding,” “Watts’s Mind,”
or “Pope’s Rape.” If the stock be rather scant, the side of the book
is then shown, and is either covered with white paper, on which the
title and price are written, or “brushed,” or else a piece of paper is
attached, with the necessary announcement.
Sometimes these announcements are striking enough, as where a number
of works of the same size have been bound together (which used to be
the case, I am told, more frequently than it is now); or where there
has been a series of stories in one volume. One such announcement was,
“Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle Captain Kyd Pirate Prairie Rob of the
Bowl Bamfyeld Moore Carew 2_s._” Alongside this miscellaneous volume
was, “Wilberforce’s Practical View of Christianity, 1_s._;” “Fenelon’s
Aventures de Télémaque, plates, 9_d._;” “Arres, de Predestinatione,
1_s._” (the last-mentioned work, which, at the first glance, seems as
if it were an odd mixture of French and Latin, was a Latin quarto);
“Coronis ad Collationem Hagiensem, &c. &c., Gulielmo Amesio.” Another
work, on another stall, had the following description: “Lord Mount
Edgecumbe’s Opera What is Currency Watts’s Scripture History Thoughts
on Taxation only 1_s._ 3_d._” Another was, “Knickerbocker Bacon 1_s._”
As a rule, however, the correctness with which the work is described is
rather remarkable.
At some few of the street-stalls, and at many of the shop-stalls,
are boxes, containing works marked, “All 1_d._,” or 2_d._, 3_d._, or
4_d._ Among these are old Court-Guides, Parliamentary Companions,
Railway Plans, and a variety of sermons, and theological, as well as
educational and political pamphlets. To show the character of the
publications thus offered--not, perhaps, as a rule, but generally
enough, for sale--I copied down the titles of some at 1_d._ and 2_d._
“_All these at 1d._--‘Letters to the Right Honourable Lord John
Russell, on State Education, by Edward Baines, jun.;’ ‘A Pastoral
Letter to the Clergy and Members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in
the United States of America;’ ‘A Letter to the Protestant Dissenters
of England and Wales, by the Rev. Robert Ainslie;’ ‘Friendly Advice to
Conservatives;’ ‘Elementary Thoughts on the Principles of Currency and
Wealth, and on the Means of Diminishing the Burthens of the People, by
J. D. Basset, Esq., price 2_s._ 6_d._’” The others were each published
at 1_s._
“_All these at 2d._--‘Poems, by Eleanor Tatlock, 1811, 2 vols., 9_s._;’
‘Two Sermons, on the Fall and Final Restoration of the Jews, by the
Rev. John Stuart;’ ‘Thoughts and Feelings, by Arthur Brooke, 1820;’
‘The Amours of Philander and Sylvia, being the third and last part of
Love-letters between a Nobleman and his Sister. Volume the Second. The
Seventh Edition. London.’”
From a cursory examination of the last-mentioned twopenny volume, I
could see nothing of the nobleman or his sister. It is one of an inane
class of books, originated, I believe, in the latter part of the reign
of Charles II. Such publications professed to be (and some few were)
records of the court and city scandal of the day, but in general they
were works founded on the reputation of the current scandal. In short,
to adopt the language of patterers, they were “cocks” issued by the
publishers of that period; and they continued to be published until
the middle of the eighteenth century, or a little later. I notice
this description of literature the more, particularly as it is still
frequently to be met with in street-sale. “There’s oft enough,” one
street-bookseller said to me, “works of that sort making up a ‘lot’ at
a sale, and in very respectable rooms. As if they were make-weights, or
to make up a sufficient number of books, and so they keep their hold in
the streets.”
As many of my readers may have little, if any, knowledge of this class
of street-sold works, I cite a portion of the “epistle dedicatory,” and
a specimen of the style, of “Philander and Sylvia,” to show the change
in street, as well as in general literature, as no such works are now
published: